Here we go… chapter 2…
-SpiritOfErebus
I walked through the mines, my computer secured safely in the heavy case that it came with. I shadily looked left and right, before beckoning my robot to follow more closely. Thankfully, no stones were thrown, but maybe it had something to do with the location.
I looked up at a white, circular building made almost entirely out of steel. Minimalistic and small windows adjourned the top, along with a fence-wall construct that could probably make the location a small, defensible fortress. In fact, there was a pedestal that was probably there to mount a machine gun, even if the pedestal was empty at the moment.
In other words, this was where management lived.
"I was supposed to come here, right?" I whispered, looking at the stairs that lead to my corporate overlords.
"What you deem management did indeed request your presence at this location." the robot said monotonously. "You seem guarded about this location. I can engage self defense protocols for you, client."
"No need." I said, shoving down the robot's hands as it came up in a boxer's stance. "Don't damage the computer."
"Adjusting mission parameters."
I sighed, before I inched up the stairs. From around the buildings, miners and soldiers alike watched me.
Everybody was afraid of the person that dwelled in this building that ran this totalitarian place.
Wincing, I knocked on the door.
"Come in." A mature, female voice said. Cautiously, I twisted the doorknob and stepped inside.
The inside was dark. Darker than it should be. But, in the corner, a person sat on a desk, headset on and hands frantically clicking a keyboard. From the reflection in their glasses, I could see that… they were… playing video games?
"Are you here to deliver lunch or something? Set it down on the desk, as usual, Courtney." the woman said, adjusting her glasses as her hands inched towards the corner of the desk. "If you don't have anything else to report, then get out before I-"
"I-I'm not Courtney." I muttered nervously, looking at the whip that she was now holding. The robot stepped before me, preparing to shield me. I looked at the weapon, seeing its studded body and slightly weighted tail coiled on the desk. Its handle glinted smoothly in the computer light, indicating that it was… probably well used.
"I'm Yun Wu, here to report about the security cameras." I said, remembering the many times I had to submit a report to a rather intimidating professor. This would be no different, right? The only difference was that this was management, and that they could probably cave in my skull instantly with the whip that looked more and more like a mace.
"Just stand there for a while." the woman said, snappily. "Can't you see I'm in the middle of a game? Filthy casuals… take this combo!"
I stood awkwardly in the corner, my bravado slowly draining as I considered making a run for it, pretending that I never reported back with the security report. Still, I had told her my name, and running wouldn't change a thing.
I had to stay there.
Mentally, I went over my plan once more.
One, get control of the security cameras.
Two, find the miners that were probably escaping the camp because of the hellish conditions.
Three, escape myself.
Four, make it obvious enough that I was trying to help the mine and not get murdered myself. That… would be harder than I thought.
Finally, after fifteen minutes of me sweating nervously, she finally exited out of the gaming tab. Sighing, she loosened the tight business coat that she wore for some reason, adjusted her glasses once again, and turned on the lights. Getting her whip from the table, she swayed over until I had to look up about sixty degrees to meet her eyes.
Everything in my mind was saying that this person was dangerous… in multiple ways.
"I didn't know that my repairman was a child." she said casually, looking me up from head to toe. "But, we're already running a labor camp here. Why not break the rules again with child labor?"
"Ma'am, uh… can we just get on with my job?"
"You sure are impatient, huh?" she said, smiling, before cracking her whip and carving a deep gorge into her wall. I looked at the site of the strike reflexively, before noticing that the walls, despite being made out of solid steel, had several of the same trenches carved into it.
That… was fucking terrifying.
"Who are you, to order me around?" she said in a sickly sweet voice. I began to inch behind my robot, before realizing that she could swing her whip through steel. "I own this mine. I control your food and your shelter. I own your life! I-"
She coughed, before stepping back and coughing.
"I'm sorry about that." she said. "Let's just… get on with it, shall we?"
I blinked. The attitude shift was… rather abrupt. More abrupt than any healthy, sane person really should be able to do.
"Well then, sit down." she said, gesturing to a bean bag that looked very out of place in the minimalistic house. I sat down on the softest thing I've felt in years, and put my computer on the desk casually.
"You dare encroach upon my desk?" the manager said in a drastically different tone. I frantically looked at the robot again, hoping that it would try to shield me.
"No, nevermind that. Just settle down, damn it!" she whispered to herself… not very quietly, while massaging her temples.
"Okay." I said, quickly. I'd better get this over with. "The security camera wasn't glitched. It was looped to play the same footage over and over again. They didn't stop the loop, which is how it was noticed."
"So… people have been getting out of the camp?" the woman said, this time both dangerous, yet not deranged. Instead of a barely restrained rage, it was a cold, measured rage. "Without my permission? And they were able to get past the heavy security systems of this camp?"
"I'd… presume so?" I said. "But no staff members have gone missing, so realistically, it could only have been the miners."
"Or maybe," I thought, "You're the person smuggling out stuff to sell. And you just want to pretend to investigate the issue to get your management off your back. But it's probably the miners."
"What do you need to figure out the problem?" she said, standing up and getting a sheet of paper from a slightly destroyed folder hanging off the tattered wall.
"I just need to see the hardware and software of the security cameras." I muttered. "Then, I can see what mechanism they used to loop the footage and detect their loop when they've set it up."
"Good." she said, signing a form and passing it over to me. "Now, get out of here and solve that problem. Take this to the security office, and they'll let you do whatever you need."
"Thank you and goodbye!" I said quickly. "Robot, follow me."
I quickly packed up my computer, passed it to the robot, and together, we speedwalked out of the room just as a whip was unraveled and a furious scream echoed behind us.
Quickly, I shut the door.
"Well, that was intense." I muttered, looking down on the form that gave me authority to access the security office. "Let's get our hands on the miner attendance record."
"Why do we require that? Your mission is to find the people sabotaging the security system."
"Shh…" I whispered, looking around at many members of staff having their morning coffee. One member, John, waved at me from his seat at a table.
"Hey, kid!" he yelled boisterously. "Get over here and get a mug!"
"I'm only eight." I said back, my voice painfully high-strung. I winced. Damn it, why am I being nervous now? They noticed something, didn't they? They probably did. They're trained security staff.
"What's gotten into you, kid?" John asked. "You seem weird."
Yep. It was official. They were onto something.
"N-nothing…" I stuttered, trying to make up an excuse on the spot. "I just… visited the manager."
The canteen went quiet. John looked at the officer sitting besides him and traded a nervous look.
"The manager?" John asked. "What for? The security camera thing?"
"Yeah." I sighed, sitting down next to them while mentally fist pumping for the excuse that they provided for me. "Did you know she has a whip that can carve trenches into steel walls? It's terrifying."
"Tell me about it." John said. "So, is it the miners messing with the software?"
I was about to hold up the mug and take a drink, but… something caught my attention. An opportunity to divert suspicion.
"How do you know that it's a software problem, and not just… a hardware problem? And why the oddly specific accusations?"
John laughed nervously, and many people started staring at him instead of looking at me with a pitying gaze.
"Well, it has to be those fucking animals, right? They've even wrecked that crane you fixed. Oh, and did you know that they intentionally collapsed a tunnel?"
"Really?" I said, putting down my mug of untouched coffee. "That's interesting."
Standing up, I left the staff to question John themselves. That would keep them off my back for a while, hopefully.
At least, until I managed to escape this hell hole. It probably wasn't going to work, though.
…
"My sensory data and emotional analysis indicates that they were pitying you instead of being suspicious." the robot said monotonously.
"So… I was just being paranoid?"
"Indeed." the robot said. "What you may have is Persecutory Delusional Disorder, borne out of the insecurities you experienced during your experience in the mine. I can activate my psychological comfort module if you wish-"
"There's no need." I said, red creeping up my cheeks. "I just have to access the security office, find a security camera looping device, which I have no experience with, and locate the people actually doing the looping…"
"Do you want me to access databases available for information on security camera looping devices?"
"Didn't you say the pickaxe disabled your wi-fi connection?"
"Correct. But if you plug me into your computer, I will be able to access its hardware."
"Fine, fine." I said, sighing. "I'll work on something on the side. You do need a combat learning UI, though."
"Affirmative. Estimated time of survival against the manager: two seconds."
"Anyways, let's just… work, okay?"
…
Within a three dimensional fighting game I downloaded from the internet, I began to access the files and began to mod.
"I have to add real physics, I guess." I thought, starting to add constant vectors as gravity and normal force. Friction could be neglected for now, and I would have to modify the characters to fit the parameters of the people we were going to fight.
How much did it take to tear steel walls with a steel ball? To calculate this, we would need to know what type of steel and their respective hardness scale, along with the material of the ball.
Thankfully, I was granted enough clearance to find out material order requests. I was supposed to use it to find out who bought the supplies to actually hack the security cameras, but since there was no method of tracking what I did, I decided to misuse this very abusable power. I scrolled very, very far back in the order history, when the manager entered this camp and ordered the weapon that would probably give me nightmares. The item was made of a special alloy that was one of the hardest metals that could be synthesized. It was extremely expensive, so thankfully, the whip was only tipped with that metal.
Still, it would basically shear off half of my robot's arms if it even tried to block, which meant that we would have to do something called deflection.
We could take some blows at an angle while moving backwards to limit momentum and damage done while trying to run away. Being a robot, the robot had no problems with running backwards, either. I just had to guide the motion. And since the robot would probably carry me on top of his shoulders…
No, wait. I couldn't run away. Or, well, we couldn't run away together. If I really angered the manager, the only hope I had was to leave the robot and let it fight for me.
I looked over at the robot, still slumped over as it communicated with the network. I couldn't give it a name now, not when I would potentially have to sacrifice it.
For a moment, I considered whether or not I really wanted to continue with this really risky plan. At least I was fed here… I had a house…
Well, who was I kidding? I didn't want to live in a place that used child labor and borderline slave labor forever. I slapped myself lightly on the head, before I returned to constructing the simulation.
The robot was going to need a lot more training to raise survival times to five minutes. But that wasn't the important part. Fighting was just a contingency plan.
"Meanwhile, I still have to get over the walls…" I thought, another strange idea already entering my mind.
That day was going to be a long day.
…
"This should definitely not work." I thought, as I tied the many, many jackhammer pistons together and tried to make them parallel.
"Hey, kid, what are you doing?" John said, walking over and looking at my abominable creation.
"Nothing much." I said. "I'm just combining these pistons to… uh… break walls faster. Hopefully this can increase output."
"Sure, sure. I totally understand." John said, looking at the jumble of wires nonchalantly. "And how goes that investigation?"
"Decently." I muttered. "Nothing much has happened. I'm still trying to understand how they hacked the security cameras."
"Anyways, I'm just kinda here to explain that… I would not leave this camp." John said, twiddling his thumbs behind his back. "I know that you might be suspicious because of my strangely observant statements, but I have the least reason out of any of these people to leave. Those fuckers should pay for what they did to my father. And my grandfather. And my great, great grandfather."
As I continued soldering and connecting wires, I listened to John's family's history of service against the faunus. Apparently, every single one of his family's ancestors had fought… and died against the faunus. It would be impressive, if it wasn't for the fact that they were incompetent enough to participate in and die in an ambush against the faunus during the night, where they all had night vision.
"...And I'm here because I think that if I just kept working here, I could avoid dying and break my family's pattern!" he said, smiling. "Granted, this isn't a war, but still…"
"That's good to know." I said, smiling back at him insincerely. "If you're so invested in keeping this camp as it is-"
"And I am." He interjected.
"Could you bring me the faunus attendance list?" I said. "It would be helpful to track down which one of them haven't showed up for work."
"Oh, that's easy." John said. "I'll just ask Tim for you, no problem. He's here because he was deemed unfit for service, by the way. He's seen some things."
"...I did not need to know that." I said. "But thanks."
John quickly slinked away, and shrugging, I continued to work on my highly impractical project: Wearable jackhammer pistons. With these on a fist, and combined with the robot's heavy mass, with its electrical network and the power of these jackhammers, if a punch could connect onto the whip, the constant motion of the jackhammer pistons would be able to hopefully parry the attack. If it didn't work? Well, there would be nothing lost other than twelve of my very disposable supply of jackhammer pistons. I seriously had way too many of those things.
In his other hand, the robot could probably hold some sort of shield, but that wouldn't be very useful, either, considering the fact that the whip could shatter steel walls. Therefore, I decided that the best offense was defense, and an electric spear would probably be able to do something.
But first, I would have to make something that would allow the robot to discharge electricity, yet another hurdle to overcome.
Well, it hopefully wasn't anything some jackhammer battery packs couldn't solve. Now, if only I could actually get the jackhammer fist gauntlet to work…
I connected the wires to a battery pack and let the machine run. The pistons collided and destroyed each other, placed too close to each other to work smoothly. Their extrusions collided with each other and created sparks, dislodging wires and threatening to start a fire. I quickly disconnected the battery.
…This was going to take a while.
…
"Is this operation really necessary?" the robot said. "A training simulation does nothing to my current protocols. I am designed to be the forefront of Atlas's fighting force, but I am also very disposable. There are a great number of my brethren that could fill my ranks."
"You're irreplaceable to me." I said. "Here, you are fighting alone, and to ensure the continuation of your escort mission and my safety, you will have to learn."
"...Are these emergency protocol updates and hardware additions, then?" the robot said, looking down at the two gauntlets I made for the robot, each with a battery surrounded with a slanted piece of sheet metal that could hopefully keep the whip from destroying the battery. Connected to one was a spear with exposed wires weaved around it. The other was an array of four jackhammer pistons that were separated from each other with a wire frame that would minimize their interference on each other. They were all facing the same direction, and would be able to amplify melee damage if used correctly.
…It was not a great design.
"Don't use the gauntlets too much, or they might explode." I said, casually. "Upload these weapons into your mind with the item scanning protocol."
"Affirmative. Then?"
"Then?" I said, grinning. "We do a little… simulation. Have you heard of The Matrix? Does that exist in this world?"
"No. Again, making mentions of other worlds is usually grounds for a stay in a mental institution. I can contact-"
"Just shut up and get in there." I sighed, plugging the robot into my computer, before sitting down to watch the robot learn combat by itself.
"…If I did declare insanity, would I be able to get out of this camp?" I wondered. For a moment, I contemplated it, but then…
"Nah, they'd probably just throw me in with the miners and I'd die."
As I watched the simulated robot get promptly destroyed by the whip-wielding character in the game, I began to take notes.
…Maybe putting the batteries on the arms was not a good idea. And what was an electric spear going to do? It would probably just break instantly, and shock the robot.
I sighed. There were going to be several revisions.
…
Obviously, not all the inventions are going to be good ideas. I envision that by the end of Yun's innovative spree, there are going to be at least three boxfuls of useless prototypes.
Also, the annoying thing is that we get no physical feats AT ALL from the Atlesian Knights. They're just cannon fodder, which, I guess, is why I picked them as something in the early game of this fic. I just didn't expect there to be, well no information.
Discord link: discord . gg / 9t9MK3jHmV (Join to participate in debates about weapons and their practicality, which took a while in this chapter!)
-SpiritOfErebus