Chapter 10: Defective
"Come on son, put some heart into it!" "I am, your just too good!" my AC was no match to my dad's, even though he piloted a fossil he knew it like the back of his hand. He was an incredible AC pilot, but many say that his skills as a scientist more than surpass his AC skills. "Don't say that, you can't use it as an excuse" "Oh yes I can, I'm not in the top rank in the arena!" I boosted my AC behind a building as he fired a blast at me "That's why you're here training with me dumb dumb" he brought me to the city scape arena for some training, I was ready to take my Raven's Test but dad wanted me to get some last minute brushing up "What am I going to learn by losing to you?" he had fired 8 shots at me, 7 all dead center reducing my AP to 327 and he still had 42 more rounds left "I don't know" he paused, "I guess learning not to get killed" he chuckled "Ah ha" I forced a laugh I boosted from my cover and fired my bazooka, he was gone before I pressed my trigger, hovering high above me with his Kawasawa rifle aimed right at me "Game over son" That was the last thing he ever said, I heard an explosion, his Kawasawa erupted in his hand taking his AC along with it, his famed Kawasawa had taken another life.his.
"We have begun the second stage of project Black Bird" Defect's father turned toward an old man "Good, good are their ACs ready?" the old man's voice a whisper "Yes we have assembled exact replicas of ACs the Ravens use" "Get them ready, we my friend, are about to begin war" "And Kitty's part?" "She has already worked too hard resurrecting the 9Ball army" he drew in a rattled breath, "now with pilots to take over the AI program we no longer need worry about them malfunctioning, remember she was only able to resurrect 3 perfect 9Balls by the time we attacked the nests, we had to use some of your early experiments to fill in the rest" "Yes that is true, even though the prototype Crows demolished the Nests" he let out a sigh, "to many were terminated by Ravens, it's a good thing I imputed a self destruct mechanism into each one as to erase any evidence to our plans" "Yes, a minor set back, all they found were empty cores whenever they examined the fallen 9Ball ACs so our plans are still veiled, we must hurry though" the old man began to cough, "I fear I do not have enough time to see the fall of the Ravens"
We were filed into a room filled with tubes, big enough to house a person, and that was probably their propose. We had been waiting for about 5 minutes after we had arrived when the door opened, it was my dad. "All of you will strip and enter the tubes" the females of our group let out a hmpf, acknowledging that they will do no such thing "To not comply would mean death" he motioned to the drones with machine guns, "all except you" he looked at me, "you shall follow" A drone prodded me on my back, looks like I had no choice, I exited the room following my dad. Dam I thought, I almost had my chance to see the pilot Cherry Wood naked. He led me to another room, this time it was full of monitors, white lights blaring in my eyes. "You are dismissed" the drone that had followed me exited the room the door closed behind it. "I know what your wondering" he said, "Dispite my appearance I am not your father" "Then who are you?" I was looking at him closely now "I am what you could call a PLUS" he continued "A PLUS?" I had no clue about what he was talking about "A PLUS is a clone of a Raven, but with enhanced abilities" "But how, I thought cloning was banned on earth" "On earth yes, on Mars it's a totally different story, all the top ranked Ravens are PLUS warriors, that's why Martian Ravens have higher skill then the ones on earth" "But why a clone of you?" I paused, "I mean my father" "The one you call your father isn't your father" "Huh?" I said, what was this man talking about of course the man I knew was my father, but then again so was this man in front of me "The one that you grew up with is nothing but a PLUS, your real father was never an AC pilot, he was a scientist trying to create the ultimate fighting machine" "No.it cant be true" my mind was set a back, this didn't make sense "It is" his voice was expressionless, "your father created the first PLUS clone, he used himself as the test subject and I was what was created" he looked at me again, his eyes cold, without a soul, "I was a failure, I didn't exhibit any piloting skills but I did have a use" this couldn't be true, it couldn't "Although I wasn't the better pilot, I was the better scientist and became his assistant, I retained all of his memories and his desires, all his wants and his wishes" I had lost my voice, all my childhood memories with my father was actually with a lump of meat, just a clone "We worked together and finally produced a PLUS with the enhancements we desired it to have, we erased part of its memory and decided to have it watch over you as to not raise any suspicion to our work" This was just too much, I couldn't say anything "He rose up through the ranks, he even began to raise you, without any knowledge that he wasn't the original" he thought for a minute, "that all changed when the both of you were involved with that incident" "Incident?" I finally had said something "Your father, the original was heart broken that he had lost his child" "Lost his child?" I interrupted, "did I have another sibling? "No" he said, "when the PLUS's Kawasawa exploded it not only killed the PLUS but his child as well" "What?" I said, "what do you mean his child died? I'm still here!" "No, the original Chris Parker died in that blast" what he said froze my heart "It cant be." I lost my voice to continue "He grieved and came up with an idea, he decided to create a PLUS of his son" he looked at me, but I knew what he was going to say, "and you are the product"
"I'm.I'm.a PLUS" the words came out of my mouth without expression "Because you retained all of the memories that lead up to the incident, you wouldn't have known" I felt sick to my stomach, my mind raced to all of my battles, every time I closed my eyes, my body reacted accordingly, saving my hide every time, was this the PLUS kicking in? "Your father left you in the place of his son and left for Mars with me when he met up with my master" I didn't care anymore to what he said, my mind was lost in an abyss of denial, but I still had to hear about what he talked about "He was our next test subject and we produced a perfect PLUS of him, the PLUS was hailed on Mars as the Great Revolutionist, Leos Klein" Leos Klein, I knew that name, he was the one who wanted to destroy Mars with the moon Phobos "As the original aged his PLUS lived on, eventually meeting its end to a Raven, my original came to an end after a terrible incident in the lab" he continued, licking his lips "Klein was devastated his PLUS would have produced something that would live forever under his name a Raven had taken it away form him, his hatred for Ravens sparked his wish to whip them out" Why was he telling me all of this? I thought "He then had made contact with his grand daughter who had discovered the factory that the original controller had used to create the 9Ball units, his health failing he wanted nothing more than the destruction of all Raven's Nest both Earth and Mars. His grand daughter managed to resurrect a 9Ball and decided to let it loose on Mars, producing exceptional results. In the end though, the programming was unstable and malfunctioned, as with our other experiments with soon after. Then he created a brilliant plot, to have the Ravens of Earth and Mars destroy each other, he planned attacks on the Raven's nests but he needed a scape goat. The one to take the blame, when it hit him" the man before me smiled, "why not create PLUSs of Ravens and do the attack for them? We have a spy in the best Nests to pic out the Ravens lucky enough to be cloned. Then the Nests would blame another for the attacks bringing on a full scale war that would drag the world with it" with this he drew his gun, the same one that had killed the Raven who had tried to escape "My original master's wish has now been completed" he aimed his gun at me "Hey what the?" I said, looking at the barrel of the gun "He wanted you to know everything, that was his last wish before he died, now that I have accomplished it I am free to kill you " he squeezed the trigger, the gunshot reverberated on the walls
I closed my eyes, this was it.but I was still alive. I opened my eyes and was in awe. Everything was in slow motion, the bullet had just left the barrel of gun, slowly flying toward me, I looked up at the PLUS of my father, it was motionless looking down at me. I got up, looking at the man, when time resumed. "What?" he started but I was quicker, I pulled the gun out of his hand and aimed it at his head. "You cant shoot me, I'm your father" he said with a smile "Yes you are" I said looking dead straight into his eyes, "I'm not the original Defect" his smile faded, and I squeezed the trigger, his body fell limply to the ground. In my mind he wasn't my dad, and I wasn't his son either.
"Come on son, put some heart into it!" "I am, your just too good!" my AC was no match to my dad's, even though he piloted a fossil he knew it like the back of his hand. He was an incredible AC pilot, but many say that his skills as a scientist more than surpass his AC skills. "Don't say that, you can't use it as an excuse" "Oh yes I can, I'm not in the top rank in the arena!" I boosted my AC behind a building as he fired a blast at me "That's why you're here training with me dumb dumb" he brought me to the city scape arena for some training, I was ready to take my Raven's Test but dad wanted me to get some last minute brushing up "What am I going to learn by losing to you?" he had fired 8 shots at me, 7 all dead center reducing my AP to 327 and he still had 42 more rounds left "I don't know" he paused, "I guess learning not to get killed" he chuckled "Ah ha" I forced a laugh I boosted from my cover and fired my bazooka, he was gone before I pressed my trigger, hovering high above me with his Kawasawa rifle aimed right at me "Game over son" That was the last thing he ever said, I heard an explosion, his Kawasawa erupted in his hand taking his AC along with it, his famed Kawasawa had taken another life.his.
"We have begun the second stage of project Black Bird" Defect's father turned toward an old man "Good, good are their ACs ready?" the old man's voice a whisper "Yes we have assembled exact replicas of ACs the Ravens use" "Get them ready, we my friend, are about to begin war" "And Kitty's part?" "She has already worked too hard resurrecting the 9Ball army" he drew in a rattled breath, "now with pilots to take over the AI program we no longer need worry about them malfunctioning, remember she was only able to resurrect 3 perfect 9Balls by the time we attacked the nests, we had to use some of your early experiments to fill in the rest" "Yes that is true, even though the prototype Crows demolished the Nests" he let out a sigh, "to many were terminated by Ravens, it's a good thing I imputed a self destruct mechanism into each one as to erase any evidence to our plans" "Yes, a minor set back, all they found were empty cores whenever they examined the fallen 9Ball ACs so our plans are still veiled, we must hurry though" the old man began to cough, "I fear I do not have enough time to see the fall of the Ravens"
We were filed into a room filled with tubes, big enough to house a person, and that was probably their propose. We had been waiting for about 5 minutes after we had arrived when the door opened, it was my dad. "All of you will strip and enter the tubes" the females of our group let out a hmpf, acknowledging that they will do no such thing "To not comply would mean death" he motioned to the drones with machine guns, "all except you" he looked at me, "you shall follow" A drone prodded me on my back, looks like I had no choice, I exited the room following my dad. Dam I thought, I almost had my chance to see the pilot Cherry Wood naked. He led me to another room, this time it was full of monitors, white lights blaring in my eyes. "You are dismissed" the drone that had followed me exited the room the door closed behind it. "I know what your wondering" he said, "Dispite my appearance I am not your father" "Then who are you?" I was looking at him closely now "I am what you could call a PLUS" he continued "A PLUS?" I had no clue about what he was talking about "A PLUS is a clone of a Raven, but with enhanced abilities" "But how, I thought cloning was banned on earth" "On earth yes, on Mars it's a totally different story, all the top ranked Ravens are PLUS warriors, that's why Martian Ravens have higher skill then the ones on earth" "But why a clone of you?" I paused, "I mean my father" "The one you call your father isn't your father" "Huh?" I said, what was this man talking about of course the man I knew was my father, but then again so was this man in front of me "The one that you grew up with is nothing but a PLUS, your real father was never an AC pilot, he was a scientist trying to create the ultimate fighting machine" "No.it cant be true" my mind was set a back, this didn't make sense "It is" his voice was expressionless, "your father created the first PLUS clone, he used himself as the test subject and I was what was created" he looked at me again, his eyes cold, without a soul, "I was a failure, I didn't exhibit any piloting skills but I did have a use" this couldn't be true, it couldn't "Although I wasn't the better pilot, I was the better scientist and became his assistant, I retained all of his memories and his desires, all his wants and his wishes" I had lost my voice, all my childhood memories with my father was actually with a lump of meat, just a clone "We worked together and finally produced a PLUS with the enhancements we desired it to have, we erased part of its memory and decided to have it watch over you as to not raise any suspicion to our work" This was just too much, I couldn't say anything "He rose up through the ranks, he even began to raise you, without any knowledge that he wasn't the original" he thought for a minute, "that all changed when the both of you were involved with that incident" "Incident?" I finally had said something "Your father, the original was heart broken that he had lost his child" "Lost his child?" I interrupted, "did I have another sibling? "No" he said, "when the PLUS's Kawasawa exploded it not only killed the PLUS but his child as well" "What?" I said, "what do you mean his child died? I'm still here!" "No, the original Chris Parker died in that blast" what he said froze my heart "It cant be." I lost my voice to continue "He grieved and came up with an idea, he decided to create a PLUS of his son" he looked at me, but I knew what he was going to say, "and you are the product"
"I'm.I'm.a PLUS" the words came out of my mouth without expression "Because you retained all of the memories that lead up to the incident, you wouldn't have known" I felt sick to my stomach, my mind raced to all of my battles, every time I closed my eyes, my body reacted accordingly, saving my hide every time, was this the PLUS kicking in? "Your father left you in the place of his son and left for Mars with me when he met up with my master" I didn't care anymore to what he said, my mind was lost in an abyss of denial, but I still had to hear about what he talked about "He was our next test subject and we produced a perfect PLUS of him, the PLUS was hailed on Mars as the Great Revolutionist, Leos Klein" Leos Klein, I knew that name, he was the one who wanted to destroy Mars with the moon Phobos "As the original aged his PLUS lived on, eventually meeting its end to a Raven, my original came to an end after a terrible incident in the lab" he continued, licking his lips "Klein was devastated his PLUS would have produced something that would live forever under his name a Raven had taken it away form him, his hatred for Ravens sparked his wish to whip them out" Why was he telling me all of this? I thought "He then had made contact with his grand daughter who had discovered the factory that the original controller had used to create the 9Ball units, his health failing he wanted nothing more than the destruction of all Raven's Nest both Earth and Mars. His grand daughter managed to resurrect a 9Ball and decided to let it loose on Mars, producing exceptional results. In the end though, the programming was unstable and malfunctioned, as with our other experiments with soon after. Then he created a brilliant plot, to have the Ravens of Earth and Mars destroy each other, he planned attacks on the Raven's nests but he needed a scape goat. The one to take the blame, when it hit him" the man before me smiled, "why not create PLUSs of Ravens and do the attack for them? We have a spy in the best Nests to pic out the Ravens lucky enough to be cloned. Then the Nests would blame another for the attacks bringing on a full scale war that would drag the world with it" with this he drew his gun, the same one that had killed the Raven who had tried to escape "My original master's wish has now been completed" he aimed his gun at me "Hey what the?" I said, looking at the barrel of the gun "He wanted you to know everything, that was his last wish before he died, now that I have accomplished it I am free to kill you " he squeezed the trigger, the gunshot reverberated on the walls
I closed my eyes, this was it.but I was still alive. I opened my eyes and was in awe. Everything was in slow motion, the bullet had just left the barrel of gun, slowly flying toward me, I looked up at the PLUS of my father, it was motionless looking down at me. I got up, looking at the man, when time resumed. "What?" he started but I was quicker, I pulled the gun out of his hand and aimed it at his head. "You cant shoot me, I'm your father" he said with a smile "Yes you are" I said looking dead straight into his eyes, "I'm not the original Defect" his smile faded, and I squeezed the trigger, his body fell limply to the ground. In my mind he wasn't my dad, and I wasn't his son either.