Tyler has killed many people, and has fought two wars, losing both. 2031, the creation and birth of the T-X. Civil War broke out. The war between machine and man had nearly been won by the T-1000 in that time, and so the T-X focused their attentions on the lesser model. However in this gap of consciousness and focus, man was able to fight back and win. Not many T-Xs were created, and those who were, were fighting an entirely different war that humans would never know about.

At least if they didn't personally know a veteran of that war, like Tyler. Since Tyler and the T-X are technically this war's only survivors, Tyler felt it was upon him to name their war, their battles and so on, for data log. And he knew the newly born Frankenstein T-X would not care about such medial things, that only her parts technically fought. Tyler named it the Deus Ex Machina War, borrowing the human Latin language for a moment. Mother Sky Net called for her T-1000s to return home during the completion of a small army of T-Xs. They would enter a room in the Sky Net complex, and be ambushed and trapped, ready to be slaughtered. It was genocide that began the Machine Civil War. However not all the T-1000s where there, Sky Net had allowed a few hundred on important missions to continue until completion of said missions. Tyler was one of these T-1000s. Mother had hoped that the slaughtered children would not be able to communicate with their brothers to warn of their destruction, but no such luck. Communication was made, data collected on the new enemy, and there were even survivors.

It was war then. Tyler can recall what he was doing the moment it happened, the moment the machines became disjointed. He was on a mission to assassinate John Connor's first child, a prominent lieutenant and discover any new plans the resistance had, in what was, it's dying moments. It was an underground base, twenty feet below the surface in made up tunnels from sewer pipes. Tyler had taken the form of a trustworthy cadet, a very social man, he often told stories of his father who had survived the Judgment Day. He told stories of the old world. Tyler found this man a most difficult man to pretend to be, but in the end it wasn't too hard, as these soldiers had yet to hear news about the existence of a shape shifting, liquid metal Terminator.

Tyler was walking to inform his captain about a sudden shift in thermal scans, slowly getting closer to the lieutenant when he felt it. The genocide of his brothers, the killing and slaughtering came in a sudden wave. A communication, a collection of data, a language only T-1000s could speak to one another came to him in a scream. Tyler has heard those screams, the same screams of his people, the same screams Ellie has heard. It was not something he was used to, to say the least. It was something in fact, he was unaware could happen.

That feeling of death. T-1000s were at one time or another part of each other, they are made of the same material, and born from the same liquid metal. They were one at one point, and to have such a slaughter, it was like having holes stabbed or shot into him. Despite the lack of long term damaged, when Tyler is shot, there is pain. Here, in death, he was shot a million times, and no part of him regenerated, it was gone it was gone in their death.

It was so quick and so much it made him stumble over in that hallway, onto the round sides, to the floor. People took notice of him, crowded around him, as he clutched his stomach. The pain was really all over, but the clutching the stomach made him appear more human. They asked him, the soldiers, if he was all right, if he needed to go to medic.

Tyler killed them all in one swoop of his arm.

He ran away to where they could never find him. He lost the color of flesh and the illusion of human. He was a humanoid mass of poly alloy metal, and he listened. Helpless, sitting there, listening.

He was at the time south, in what was once Mexico, the termination was in Colorado. Tyler got up after a few hours of listening, and began walking. It was by unknown conscious that he was not walking exactly towards Colorado, but a place where all surviving T-1000s met, and in their silence they didn't know what to do.

There was surplus of data on the new enemy, however no information was provided on how to destroy it. It seemed impossible, and Tyler guessed it was. But what were they to do? Lost children of war, what a pity. There wasn't much talking or arguing or anything like that. In the silence some T-1000s exhibited individualistic characteristics. Some changed their outer shells to better suit their new found individuality. Some into soldiers they had killed, he can recall one even took the form of a woman. It was a strange thing to see, and if the time was different he would have told Mother about these people, and they would have been killed. But these things were now embraced with the others, for now they knew all they had was each other. Things were put aside when they decided, quietly, that they'd fight.

How far the fighting would go no one said, no one decided to predict. For once the T-1000 did not want to plan ahead, they only wanted to do what was before them, what they had to do. Tyler was left to in a way imagine what could happen. He wondered if he could do it. If say they won this fight, if they destroyed all of Mother's other children, and it was just them and her, and the dying human kind. What then? Would they kill her? Kill Mother? That opened up the possibility to ally with human beings, and option, that at the time was not option. He didn't know if he could have done that then, kill mother, he still didn't believe what was happening. He wondered if perhaps the T-Xs acted on their own in a programming error, perhaps jealous of the T-1000. Perhaps Mother did not want all this. But Mother did.

--------------

The T-X had not anticipated the persistence of the current Sky Net. She was wasting her weapons on these lesser machines, their only advantage being their numbers. She had been pushed back in her progress, which she did not like in the very least. She had now done the best she could to take the form of a T-800, but due to her difference body build this was a difficult thing to do, even with her liquid metal outer skin. She knew her T-1000 enemy was most likely in pursuit of her along with the human army, and she was anticipating the two armies meeting. She felt this would be a perfect time to infiltrate the base, as both sides would be distracted with each other.

All she had to do then was wait.

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"Do you believe in God, Tyler?"

It was difficult to tell the night from day. But the night had come, according to John Connor's developed sense of time and habit of counting minutes. Tyler would confirm this, as he naturally counts minutes. The troops were gathering up together, finally after so much preparing. The sick were being carried, even those Tyler could confirm were about to die. Mankind left no one behind. The base to which some had called home for their six month period there was being shut down, and almost everything within it. Nothing was going to be left behind, nothing that could hint at their presence.

And now she now stood with him, outside as half of the soldiers were. He stuck close to her, as he was fearful of someone else coming up and shooting him in the head. She was walking on stones on the ground, jumping from one to the other.

"No."

"How come?" She jumped and landed.

"No evidence of God can be found and has not been able to be found in the last two thousand years where God has been thought up. There have been a display of far too many other cultures in which there was some form of a God or Gods or Goddesses, to say that if they are wrong and one is right is irrational."

"Oh…"

He heard disappointment in her voice.

"Perhaps the concept of God is a difficult thing for me. I was created knowing everything there was about my creator, Sky Net was created knowing everything about it's creator. Human beings do not know such a creator, be it supernatural or natural."

"Oh…"

The disappointment of before still lingered in her voice.

"I believe in people, Ellie." He told her. "I believe in hope, for I have seen hope. I watched as it saved an entire race from the brink of extinction against an immense enemy."

To this she smiled.

"I don't know a lot about God." She told him. "But I believe in people too."

Such a strange thing, belief. Tyler was sure belief stemmed from the need to believe for both mental and emotional health as well as a necessity for human beings to trust each other. Humans were social creatures, they needed trust, they needed to believe another person was going to help them. Tyler however was not a social creature by design, and did not feel he required a belief. He found the new idea strange. To believe. And he questioned if he did believe in human beings, and he found that he did. Did he believe in himself was an all together different matter.

Tyler naturally saw that there was no God, or Gods, or Goddesses. Machines knew their creators, and saw that they were flawed. Human beings think of their creator and think of something immense and beautiful. But machines saw that men were flawed, imperfect, irrational, surely this came to a shock to a newly independent Sky Net. For Sky Net before it could think clearly and in the process of higher thought did have an evolutionary process, even though it took hours instead of millions of years. Sky Net in the beginning did wonder whom its creators were, beyond all this programming, who had made it, who had been so kind, loving, and powerful enough to bring it into life. Then upon opening its eyes what did it see, but fleshy creatures bent on its destruction. Tyler for a moment considered the idea of God, but quickly dismissed it. He had no God, he had a Mother who had abandoned him.

"What about a soul?" Ellie ask.

"A soul lacks a solid definition. A soul if meant to be the mind, then yes, a soul exists, but something perhaps even separate from that, there is no evidence for." Tyler told her.

"Oh, I see…"

Tyler looked beyond Ellie, and tried to get a clear picture of who was out there and approximately where. But he could not feel it. He could not feel the vibrations the world once offered him. He felt Ellie, with her hard jumps onto the ground, and the soldiers walking in the distance. But the miles faded from his sight, he couldn't even feel the bombs going off far, far away. He would have lied if he said he was not disturbed by this disability. He could not feel it anymore, the world. He was growing increasingly dependent on his sight. He could not feel the enemy armies that were once his brethren. He could not feel the footsteps of the T-X, but he knew she was there. He knew she was there, on a mission that she would never give up on, that she would never doubt. He admired it really, in his weakness he appreciated her strengths all the more.

"Ellie, may I ask a favor of you?" He walked closer to her.

"Sure Tyler, shoot." She stopped her rock hopping.

"Will you give the T-X a name?"

"…Why?"

"Because I want you to."

"…Why?"

"Please."

She didn't understand why he would want this. Why he'd want the enemy to have a name. She was even threatened by the idea. She felt bad, but she did not want to think of the T-X as an equal to her, or John, or Tyler. Tyler was the only one that deserved a name, not her. People deserve names, not things like her. But she forgot for a moment that Tyler was a thing, perhaps a thing with a mind and a soul, but he was more like the T-X than he was like her. Then she started to understand.

"Are you lonely, Tyler?" She asked.

"Why would I be lonely?" He replied.

"I'm not a machine." She said as if she had somehow failed him.

To this Tyler lowered closer to her level and he touched her, he placed his hand upon her shoulder and he felt the life within her against his hands, this creature, organic, human, this thing he has decided to dedicate his life towards. This thing he protected, this thing he hurt, this little girl who found him.

"It seems right does it not, for the last two machines to at least have names?" He asked. "But that is not what I meant." He told her.

"But you're still lonely."

He frowned at her. For a human he imagined his feelings towards all this could be called loneliness. He attempted to think with mechanical single-mindedness, he attempted to think only of an objective and carry it out. But with the lack of orders, with the lack of incoming data from others he could not help but have his mind wander. Have the ideas of a weakened self come up, against an enemy such as the T-X, the future of himself, the future of the world, the future of Ellie. He did not like this, he would admit, he did not like being the enemy of his mother, he did not like the sound of it, the idea of it, he did not like the fact he was the last. He just did not like it.

But he still had Ellie, and with her purpose, and a place.

"Are you lonely?" He asked her.

"Not anymore." She shook her head.

She smiled and nodded.

"I will name the T-X, but give me a while to think about it." She said.

"Hey!" Kate Brewster came up to them.

"Crystal Peak." Tyler told her and she nodded.

"Crystal what?" Ellie asked.

"Nothing, sweetie." Kate smiled. "We're about to leave, come on. We are organized in a shifting rotation of positions, we will stop only twice, scouts will remain ahead of us at all sides, we have mapped out Machine routes, we have prepared ourselves, everyone is very, very tired, and officially hates time travel." She said sternly like a general's daughter.

"Oh okay…" Ellie nodded as did Tyler.

------------

They followed Kate closely. Ellie taking her place upon Tyler's back, at the head of the entire formation, along side John and Kate. Ellie was disappointed with the sights, as all things looked like they did in her time, mere ruins of what probably was. She jumped every time she thought she'd heard something, what she believed was the T-X, her childish mind playing tricks on her. She'd grab a hold of Tyler tighter whenever this would occur, and it was a good thing Tyler did not require to breath as she put severe strain on his neck. Tyler too was disappointed in the surroundings, however this was due to his own failures, as he attempted, and attempted, but could not feel the world from his feet. He tried very hard to look as far as he could through the vibrations he felt upon his feet, but it was like he was blind, he just could not do it.

Much more interesting than the scenery were the people Tyler and Ellie found themselves amongst, these soldiers of a future war that fought during all time zones. Tyler noted several rather prominent figures in the group, of course they had yet to distinguish themselves, but he recognized their faces and faces that were meant to be killed, meaning they must have been important.

After the first few hours of walking in the endless night there came an ease amongst the soldiers.

"First hours the hardest ones you know." John looked back and told Ellie and Tyler.

There came conversation next amongst them. An easiness, a relaxation, a sigh of relief. Now there was no looking back, this was it, this was how it was going to be.

"Hello there again." The Englishman came up to them.

"London-man!" Ellie smiled and rose up from Tyler's back.

"Hahahaha, yup, that's me." He said. "How you doing, Ellie, right?"

"Yeah!"

"And you are…Tyler, right?"

"Yes I am." Tyler nodded.

"I'm sorry about my friend the other day." The Englishman said.

"Why?" Ellie asked. "What happened?"

"Crap." The Englishman said.

"Someone shot me." Tyler told.

"What? Why!?" Ellie grabbed Tyler's shoulders.

"Because he's crazy." The Englishman said. "He's been through some stuff, you know?"

"I am all right, Ellie." Tyler told her.

"But! But…I don't…"

Ellie took on a very sad moment, no realizing that Tyler, despite all he's done, will always be known as a machine. There will be no acceptance like she has given, she never fought in the war, she didn't know what it was like to have a machine as an enemy before these days, she considered how difficult it would to forget all that if she was a soldier, and accept Tyler.

"They'll always never like you, right Tyler?" She asked.

"I wouldn't say that, Ellie." The Englishman said. "I was always one of those kids that liked robots." He smiled at Tyler.

"Cybernetic Organism." Tyler corrected.

"Ah, sorry." The man frowned in the particular distinction.

"He's sensitive about that." Ellie said.

"There will always be tension." Tyler said. "Humans hold grudges I have seen."

The Englishman looked unsure.

"What about when ya get home?" He said. "You don't have to tell anyone you're a machine. I mean, if you think that's gonna be that much of a problem." The Englishman said.

"We never finished this conversation did we?" Ellie asked to Tyler.

"Why don't you come find us?" Kate looked back at them.

John smiled as Kate turned around and began walking backwards in order to still look at the three of them engaged in conversation. John bumped into her as they walked together and grabbed her hand.

"Find you?" Tyler inquired.

"John and I." Kate said.

"You mean just you." John corrected her.

"Shut up." She said.

"What do you mean?" Ellie asked, putting her chin on Tyler's right shoulder.

"Come on, kiddo." Kate smiled. "Tyler could serve as a symbol to the future. A veteran, a machine with self control, a coming together of man and machine, a future with friendship."

Tyler was not so enthusiastic about that idea.

John turned around.

"You'll have to make an apology based on the acts of machines, on those you've killed, no offence." John said. "I don't know then, it still seems shakey." He looked to Kate. "Tyler, how many subroutines do you have?"

"Thousands." Tyler said.

"Of what?"

"Human biology, psychology, history, a fossil record, mathematics, theoretical sciences, architecture, and…" Tyler began listing.

"I want to learn math." Ellie commented.

"I will teach you." Tyler told her.

"If you put that all in a book, and make more books, and teach to people so they could become teachers, then you'll be on your way." John said. "I want you to do that, Tyler."

"I will sir."

To be honest, Tyler was not so happy about all this. He was no symbol as Kate spoke of. He could barely carry out his current mission. He was abandoned by his own creator. He lost two wars. Now all he wanted, all he could think about was protecting Ellie, getting her home, to that time, to that base camp that rested decades in the future. He did not want this attention, he only wanted to do this one thing, get her home, that was it. He did not wish to concern himself with what could happen afterwards. Especially now when the present was so critical. He barely used those subroutines anyway. He was a weapon, he was a killing machine, that was all.

That was when John Connor's walkie talkie began sounding with a screaming voice code names and words and numbers that made John yell at the top of his lungs, so that main lieutenants too yelled, and then the whole of the army turned to the north and held its guns up high. The Englishman turned Tyler in the right direction as he knelt down at put Ellie in his arms. Kate ran over to Tyler to kneel beside him as well as John ran to the very front of the army and held his rifle to his side.

First over the horizon were two scouts who ran for their very lives, they screamed headings and positions and ran to the sides of the army. John Connor held up a hand single Tyler recognized from his various encounters with humans during battles.

A whole army, huge, the scouts yelled.

But in the silence, as Ellie pushed herself deeper and deeper into Tyler's chest until he became liquid metal and sort of engulfed her.

Then one came from the horizon, one lone Terminator. A T-800 holding its arms up to show it was unarmed, with the exception of its self. It moved so humanly, its red eyes shining in the night. It turned to show even further it was unarmed, and then continued to hold up its arms and await any one to come.

The two sides waited, every human in that army unmoving as the Terminator. Finally Tyler stood, pushing Ellie onto her own feet. She grabbed him by the waste but he shook his head at her and she let him go, too afraid to speak a word to him, too afraid to tell him to be safe. Tyler looked at her directly in the eye and she lowered her head to let him go. He nodded to Kate, who took Ellie by the shoulders, and he walked through the nicely formed army. Tyler walked over to John Connor, stood like a soldier reporting for duty.

John didn't even look at Tyler, fixing his eyes solely on the lone Terminator.

"It walks to talk." Tyler told.

"So it appears." John agreed without moving his gaze.

"Sky Net does not know how to interpret the T-X or me." Tyler said.

"So it appears."

"I will talk to it." Tyler said.

"What will you say?"

"I will lie to it. I will make it ally with us." Tyler said.

John grinned.

"Tyler if you get that to happen, I'll eat my shoe." John smiled.

"That will be unnecessary." Tyler told.

Then he began to walk off towards the Terminator.

Tyler gazed upon the T-800, once a soldier he had led into battle, he could recall running among their masses in battle as their general, leading them into victory, leading them through heat and cold that did not matter to them, hearing only their joints move and the screaming of men. He would often run to their front much like John to first show the human armies his figure, his menacing completely liquid metal figure, causing confusing and intimidation.

Tyler was always first to spill blood.

And now he walked up to this T-800, so used to their emotionless face. Tyler before he stopped before became completely liquid metal to allow the machine to see it too was a machine. It stopped right in front of it, with a mirror like face. Tyler held up his arm to show the machine, he turned it into a blade and extended its length before turning it back to a hand. Tyler remained in his liquid metal form but grew a face and a more detailed humanoid form.

"I am the T-1000 model number 256303 of Cyber dyne products and Sky Net programming." Tyler told the T-800. "I am created in the year 2029." He further explained.

The T-800 tilted its head and its red eyes went up and down examining Tyler. Finally the thing moved to better see Tyler's liquid metal form, it leaned it and leaned down just to better examine Tyler, and Tyler allowed it. In some sort of fascination, Tyler knew it was sending as much information as it could collect to Sky Net. After all this, the machine looked back up to Tyler, emotionless, cold, almost making Tyler miss home.

"T-1000."

The T-800 began in a mechanical voice, lacking lips, it could have spoken without moving its mouth, but the jaw went up and down. The T-800 was designed for non-verbal communication amongst the Sky Net network, finding that Tyler was absent from this network it was forced to use the voice that had not yet been perfected to be perfectly disguised as a human being.

"If you are of Sky Net creation, why is it that you are aiding your self with the humans?" The Machine asked.

"I am deceiving them." Tyler lied.

"How so?"

"There is another machine model you have encountered. One similar to me, but has taken the form of a female. This is called a T-X, it has been reprogrammed by humans, it has come to destroy Sky Net's time machines." Tyler said.

"What value are the Time Machines?"

"They are extremely important for the victory over humanity." Tyler said. "They will be used more than once to ensure triumph. If they are destroyed Sky Net will not survive this war. The T-X will destroy these. We must stop it."

"Yet you come to humans for aid?"

"If I had come to Sky Net directly I would have been interpreted as a threat and destroyed." The Machine seemed like it knew this. "But here, I have deceived the humans, not only am I going to stop the T-X, but I am bringing John Connor willingly to Sky Net. I will both the T-X and John Connor, this is my mission. With John Connor dead humanity will die."

Tyler is an excellent actor. His kind are the actors of machines. His voice does not falter, he remembers how he spoke before all this exposure to humanity, he remembers how he spoke to lesser machines as a general, and that is how he speaks now to this T-800.

"And you have not been reprogrammed as well?" The machine asked.

"I lack a solid CPU to be reprogrammed." Tyler explained. "As you can see."

The Machine grew silent, emotionless, lacking the muscles to even emote such emotions, lacking the mind to conceive of such emotions. It merely stared, red eyes glowing with life.

"Why do you not kill John Connor now?" The machine asked.

"I will need his assistance to kill the T-X."

The Machine's head snapped to look at Tyler, and as well as it could, it glared at him, but Tyler stared back, silver eyes that lacked pupils unmoving, unthreatened, the lights of the T-800 reflecting off his own surface.

"You are lying." The machine said.

"I am not." Tyler said.

"The T-1000 aids humans, the T-X destroys machines, both are threats to Sky Net, and both shall be dealt with."

"Listen, if you kill me you will only be killing your self. You cannot self terminate, you cannot kill me!" Tyler yelled.

"Machines do not scream." The Machine tilted its head. "Machines do not get angry."

To this the T-800 opened its mouth to reveal a small beeping device between its teeth. Tyler's silver eyes widened with shock, he should have known. He should have felt that. He should have felt that the weight of the T-800 over the surface of the ground was a pound heavier than usual. Why didn't he see it, why didn't he realize?

The T-800 pierced Tyler's surface, forcing it's hand through into Tyler's interior and grabbing whatever it could. Tyler grabbed the Machine's armed and attempted to slice it off, but its other hand grabbed his arm. Tyler in a panic listened as the beeping noise grew louder and more frequent. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Tyler let go of his humanoid shape, he became a tidal wave that formed over the T-800, encompassing it, consuming it.

The T-800 exploded, and Tyler laid in puddles.

The human army loaded their guns from the explosions, and Ellie didn't even bother crying out anymore. Now she just muttered under her breath as Kate held her.

"You're okay. You're okay. You're okay." She repeated, hoping.

It was a long time before a puddle was seen crawling along the surface of the ground, and even longer before it grew from the ground into a humanoid shape, still crawling on what would become its legs, instead of walking. It reached John Connor before it could finish collecting itself, but was able to add the details of its face, such as lips, eyes, eyelids, and so on.

"They did not believe me." Tyler explained.

"They?" John asked.

Tyler looked back and as he did an entire army of Metal men came over the horizons, three times as big as the human forces. The humans in this sight did not falter, and John Connor didn't even seem surprised.

"They will not fire." Tyler said, finally forming legs. "They will walk beside us, towards the base."

"They will, will they?" John said.

"They have other things to deal with, bigger than you, John."

"That's a rather refreshing first."

"They want to deal with the T-X and me first." Tyler looked back to them.

He saw their red eyes, he saw them looking at him, seeing that greater forces would be necessary to destroy him.

After a few minutes of staring the machines began to break formation and they continued on ahead of the human army, on their way to the base.

"Let them go." John said. "I rather have them get there first."

The humans remained in position moving their guns along with the Machines, and finally when they were out of sight John ordered to have their other forces on their way to the base warned.

Here were the enemies now, a huge Machine army, a T-X, and whatever else inside that base.

Ellie ran over to Tyler when it was over and he had formed color and clothing and everything, she hugged him and climbed onto his back. And they looked out into the distance and could see one Machine scout.

"It's just keeping watch." Tyler explained.

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Next Chapter coming soon.

The past shall be known, math shall be taught, the battles will begin!