Mark of Man
Chapter 7
It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees.
Rokko woke slowly, feeling a severe pain in her stomach, and back. Blinking slowly, Rokko's vision cleared and she was able to take in her surroundings. She was laying on a poor quality cot, and bars surrounded three of her four sides, with a thick durasteel wall blocking her vision of what lay beyond that final wall.
A murmur of a nearby irregular caught her attention as she stood, clasping the slowly sealing hole in her gut. Synthetic blood dripped from her wounds, even her lips had trace amounts of blood that she could sense as it slid down her face.
"...The hell? How is she still alive, let alone walking after that stab wound?" He muttered.
Rokko turned her gaze to a green and blue irregular. His wrists were bound, but the pair of high end anti tank plasma cannons on his back indicated that he was either former military or Irregular Hunter and subsequently thrown into prison.
Glaring at the Irregular she fixed him with an intimidating stare.
"A simple stabbing isn't enough to take me out." She retorted.
However, even as she claimed this her sensors continued screaming warnings, and she saw her vision flicker, a tint of red entering her sight. Rokko tried to continue to act as if she was still fighting fit, but as the warnings continued to scream at her, she sank back down on the cot. She'd taken enough damage that she'd be lucky to live without external repairs. Her internal core had been nicked, she took serious impact damage from Sigma's kick, and apparently, someone had beaten her further before they'd dragged her down here; if her warnings were anything to go off of anyway. Slowly, she closed her eyes, and focused her efforts on repair, guiding her internal systems to fix what she could. Thanks to her nanotechnology, and the location of the stab wound, she'd be able to get back on her feet if given enough time, thankfully. It wasn't as if she was just an Irregular Hunter Torso, head, and arm after all.
When next she woke, she noticed a strange hunter with majestic purple wings that were tipped with blue. He was tall, much taller than her, and almost as tall as Sigma himself. Since he was facing the other way, Rokko was unable to see his face, but it almost appeared that he was wearing a strange mask of some sort.
Forcing her aching body to a sitting position she was relieved when she saw the hole that had been so visible earlier had mended. Even so, she was in a great deal of pain as she forced herself to stand. Grasping the nearby bars, Rokko X turned her attention to the reploid standing guard over her cell.
Hearing her grip the bar, the reploid turned to face her and she was struck by his avian features.
"Challenging Commander Sigma to a fight was reckless, but impressive nevertheless." The reploid commented as he crossed his arms.
"Maybe so. It was worth it though." X responded lightly as she leaned against the bars, continuing to observe the strange reploid.
"Storm Eagle, 7th Air Force." He introduced himself once he'd realized that she had no idea who he was.
Frowning for a few moments, she wracked her brain as she tried to remember him. However, the reploid merely laughed lightly.
"I'm not from this Irregular installation normally. Most of the time I'm on sky fortress duty. Irregulars can pop up anywhere after all." He explained.
X shrugged her shoulders slightly as she continued to watch him.
"So, why do they have you grounded?" Rokko asked, already knowing the answer.
It must have been, well, her. Sigma couldn't play guard dog all the time, and there were only a handful of Reploids that could match her one on one. If she was right, Sigma probably called in several reploids to watch over her so that she wouldn't do something like she had before.
"Do you need to ask?" Storm Eagle's expression turned solemn as he rested his right hand on the bars and continuing. "Look, what you did was technically something you had every right to do. I myself ended up knocking my former commander down a couple times. But, human command has a bit of an obsession with Commander Sigma. He's the 'best' reploid to have ever been created, so he gets a lot of leeway. You're going to appear before a military tribunal sometime this week. Depending on what happens… Well, good luck Huntress."
Rokko grit her teeth, realizing that her life may soon be forfeit. Clenching the bars, almost crushing them, even though they'd been reinforced she pushed off and sat back down on the bed. This was no time to pretend that she was at maximum capacity.
If she'd been forced to tell the truth, she'd admit she was somewhat scared. How could she end the oppression she'd seen if she was dead? No, if they decided that she was to be executed, she'd fight. She would survive, one way or another, no matter what it took.
X closed her eyes, allowing herself to drip back into sleep, a process that emulated that of humans but for her, was more a repair cycle than anything. As her chest unit contained a micro fusion reactor, she needed very little, and could (given enough time) recover from about any injury. Of course, getting run through was quite an extreme wound, and even though the surface was fixed, she still had a great deal of internal damage to get through. She doubted she'd be fully repaired by the time the tribunal came about.
The next few days passed silently as Rokko X was offline for the majority, trying to get her systems back online, to the best of her ability. But, before she knew it, a reploid with a goofy voice was shouting at her to get up to go to her tribunal.
Blinking furiously, Rokko rose, glancing at the large elephant like Reploid. Somehow, the roly-poly designed reploid had managed to somehow duck low enough to enter the prison, and wake her.
"Wakey wakey!" Scowling, Rokko approached the door.
The reploid's trunk deftly unlocked her cell and before she had time to react, his trunk had wrapped around her waist and lifted her into the air in front of him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing to me?" X snarled, somehow managing to keep her buster withdrawn.
"Takin' the lil' lady to her trial!" The reploid responded cheerfully.
Still scowling, Rokko resigned herself to being hoisted about in an absurd fashion, knowing that resisting would do her no favors. Then, without any further explanation, the gargantuan Reploid began to walk towards the exit, or rather his exit.
For one reason or another, he'd apparently decided since he couldn't enter through the front door, he'd just smash through one of the walls instead to pick X up, and Rokko wondered how she hadn't woke from that amount of noise.
"Why didn't you just send someone in to get me?" Rokko asked in a resigned voice as the reploid walked through his hole in the wall a second time, causing dust to cover X in the process.
"I didn't think of it!" The big lug admitted brightly.
Rokko twisted slightly to look at the reploid in stunned disbelief. How was he even alive when he was that stupid?
"Anyway, lil' lady, I'm Flame Mammoth, leader of the 4th Heavy Artillery Unit."
Don't care. This guy is an absolute buffoon. X mentally grumbled as they headed for High Command. Passing by multiple Reploids, they gawked at the strange sight of the fearsome huntress being held aloft by a goofy elephant that probably had the IQ of a child, at best.
Tapping on his snout in irritation, she waited as they slipped into the court rooms. Thankfully, unlike the prison, the High Command Structure had been built with large Reploids in mind, that, or the grandiose doors were there to showcase just how important the human commanders were. Or, rather how important they thought they were.
The room had been built as a high court in mind. An array of benches covered the majority of the room, but a single stand in the center faced the far wall where an elevated bench of pure oak stretched the length of the room. It housed two levels, the level closest to the ground made the majority of the structure, but at the center, it rose sharply to the higher level where a single individual could sit. Behind it, a majestic statue of a woman holding a pair of scales held a presence of authority, and behind it, on the far back wall, a massive banner of red and gold hues held a single statement.
The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
She frowned, deeming the very statement to be hypocrisy. Idiot humans, claiming that they knew what 'justice' meant. There was no such thing as 'justice' and saying otherwise was a fallacy. Sad, perhaps, but true nevertheless. Justice might have existed at one point, but the elusive subject had long since been abandoned by humans.
Rokko's face remained impassive as Flame Mammoth set her down, and gestured for her to take the seat facing the bench. She nodded once before doing so. Behind her, she heard several individuals enter, and from the sounds of their footfalls, they were both human and reploid alike. Apparently, her trial (and likely execution) was to be entertainment for humans. Hate burned inside of her once more. She was no mere machine, nor was she a simple subject of ridicule for the entertainment of these over engineered monkeys.
Once the doors behind her shut, another pair of doors, behind the bench slid open, revealing the entire Irregular Hunter High Command. At the center, a steel gray haired human, one that she knew all too well took the center seat. His soulless eyes glared down at Rokko X, irrational hatred emanating from the Commander.
"Now that we're assembled, we can begin." He stated coldly as he leaned back.
"I will be presiding over case IHDA-1996, on June 26th, 21114, this case will be in front of full military tribunal." The Commander stated, "I'd like Sigma to take the stage as our first witness."*
A few seconds passed before the large green armored reploid approached and stood in the witness stand.
"Do you, Unit Sigma swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, else you be deemed an irregular?" Sigma nodded at the Commander's question.
"I do so swear."
"Then, please proceed and give us a summary of the events that led us to this case."
"Very well. At approximately 9:30 A.M. U.T.C. +12:00, on June 3rd, I was busy preparing several documents for review by High Command When Irregular Huntress Rokko X stormed my office and launched an attack, destroying said documents, my desk, and a wall in the ensuing scuffle. After this, she ended up causing myself, and Irregular Hunter Headquarters considerable damage. I managed to subdue the rampaging Huntress and locked her in her cell where she has remained since."
Technically correct, but Sigma was leaving out many details that could have given her some momentum for a defense.
"Thank you unit Sigma, you may return to your duties."
Rokko's eyes widened as the Commander walked straight out of the courtroom. With that dismissal… She wouldn't be able to have her defense question him, and in turn be unable to muster a counter argument to defend her position. This was bad, very bad.
"Wait! Isn't the defense allowed to-" She froze as the commander in charge of the court case raised a gloved hand, revealing the remote that he'd used earlier.
Terrible memories of what had first happened to her assaulted her, but she couldn't let it stop her. Swallowing nervously, she plunged ahead.
"Isn't the defense allowed to quest-Agh!" She gasped, biting down a scream as he hit the switch.
H-how did… Her thoughts shattered under the agony. Pain, pain, pain. When it finally ended she forced herself to return to her sitting position, even though her entire body shook. When she finally managed to sit back down, she glared at the Commander who simply rolled his eyes and flipped the switch again.
"Guh…" She grit her teeth as she fell onto the ground a second time, agony coursing through her entire being.
Closing her hands, into fists she forced herself to stand, even through the pain, and the Commander's eyebrows rose slightly before tapping the controller again.
"I can do this all day you damn machine." He commented as she fell to the ground with a new wave of pain assaulting her.
Tears stinging her eyes, she whimpered as the pain continued, unendingly. Yet, she refused to cry out, to scream for mercy, for the pain to end. She wouldn't grovel before him, not now, not ever.
"There's no reason to waste this court's time, as such we'll continue." The commander continued, ignoring her suffering.
The trial was a blur to her, as the pain just kept going, and going. A few hours passed, before a hand laid itself on her shoulder, and she turned to face the cold, unforgiving face of him. She'd have spat at him if she had the strength, but as it was, she could only blearily glare at him.
"If it was up to me, you'd be nothing more than pieces of scrap metal. As it is, the high council decided to… Be merciful. You're going to solitary confinement, until it's obvious that you're not going to go Irregular. Cobalt Wolf seemed to think your worthless parts are worth keeping around." The Commander growled as he gripped her by the throat, as if trying to crush her windpipe.
Thankfully, in this case she wasn't human, and so the only thing he could do was cause pain. Unable to move, she just continued to glare. But, even through the painful haze, she couldn't help but wonder what he meant. Cobalt Wolf? He was stationed in another base… He was training others…
"What, you think you deserve to have an opinion? That your thoughts are worth something? You're just a tool. A simple doll at best. Be grateful that I allowed you to live in the first place." He spat, before beginning to drag her by the throat through the courtroom.
She tried to react, to pull him off of her, and spit that she'd go on her own power, but after the pain of earlier she found herself unable to move, let alone pry his crushing fingers away from her. Her arms continued to hang limply at her sides even as she tried to coax them to react. Realizing that she was unable to, she did the only thing she could. She continued to glare up at him, hating him more than ever before. If she ever were to kill a human, she'd make sure that he'd be the first to die. Sure, she'd be dubbed an irregular, but it'd almost be worth it.
Once he'd passed the doors, he continued to drag her all the way to her cell. Dropping her to the floor, he kicked her into the cell, a vicious series of blows that didn't truly hurt her much thanks to her tough armor, and general resilience, but he'd done this not to cause honest pain, but more as a statement, an attack on her psyche.
But, this time, it wouldn't work. Even though she was too drained to do anything but lay there, she weakly clenched a fist, vowing that one day he'd pay for what he'd done to her. She dimly heard the cell door clang shut behind her, and a few moments passed before she heard a familiar voice.
"You really screwed up this time Rokko." That gruff tone could only belong to one person.
Slowly, she forced herself onto her shoulder, so she could look at the entry of her cell.
"Wolf…?" She whispered, staring blearily up at him.
Standing outside of her cell, the giant reploid had crossed arms, looking at her in disappointment.
"Damn it X, I wasn't gone that long. You should have waited." He chided.
She didn't bother to reply, too exhausted and weakened to try justifying herself. Once it became apparent to Cobalt Wolf that she wasn't going to respond he sighed.
"Thankfully, I managed to change your sentence. That 'commander' of ours was planning on having you melted down. I'll try to get you out, but it'll take time, and only if you're on your best behavior will we manage to spring you."
Rokko managed to prop herself up on one elbow, looking up at the veteran hunter.
"W...Why are you helping me?" She asked weakly.
Wolf looked at her as if she had asked a stupid question.
"We're friends, and that'll never, ever change." Wolf knelt down and extended a hand into her cell, offering her what little comfort he could.
Shakily, she laid her much, much smaller hand in his, and gave him a tiny smile.
"Thank you…"
"Rest well Rokko. I'll get you free. I promise."
Slowly closing her eyes, she fell into a deep slumber. All the while she clutched his hand like a lifeline. Cobalt Wolf was… Her friend, and that made all the difference in this cold, unforgiving world. Maybe… Maybe, hope wasn't such an impossible thing after all…
*Yes, I'm well aware that a normal trial would never go like this, even a military one would allocate the defense an attorney, among many, many other things, but this is a messed up world.
Gotta admit, these are hard to write chapters and they take a toll on me. But, they're essential to the whole story too so...