Ch.7
Dusk had fallen. The spectacle looked as wonderful as the night before, though Zero didn't know that: he hadn't paid much attention to the beauty of it then. Nor could he feel the beauty of the finale the dance through the sky gave before bowing gracefully of the stage of the sky tonight. He ran through the streets, pushing ever toward the recycling center, the directions to which he had obtained from half a squad returning inside after they found that they were unnecessary to the mission. He dove in and out of the light of the sun, from the shadow of one building to the next, barely being fully bathed in the light of the sunset, glowing gold for one brilliant moment, shining brilliantly back towards the soft light that shone in such a stronger manner on him. But then it would end, Zero would fall back under the shadow of a building, blackened under the gluttonous building who took the light for himself and forbid it to those behind him. Like a dolphin in the wake of a ship, leaping out to watch the passengers, to simply look majestic, before falling to the grip of gravity again, and falling beneath the ocean's surface.
Zero, of course, took no notice of this; he was concentrated on getting to the power plant. He was eager to begin. Since he had figured out that there would be a fight to be had, he had remembered his personal vow to see both sides of the story, and find the just cause in the war. This was the perfect opportunity to find that.
The storm clouds loomed ahead, and the dark building Zero had taken for a power plant two days ago, he found, was actually the disposal center he had been looking for. Land underneath the clouds began to take form, showing itself as a decimated city block. Obviously, it was the main commercial district of the city before hand, and was in far worse condition than anything around it. Glass buildings without any windows and few floors left, half-finished construction sites left with melted, twisted beams left poised over the city like massive snakes prepared to suck out the little life that remained of the poor landscape, commercial skyscrapers that the top halves had been cleaved clear off of, and had fallen onto the other buildings, crushing them as if made of paper, strewn rubble in the streets, and broken glass was only part of what made the forlorn landscape of this desolate urban wasteland.
Zero started to slow his running speed as he entered the place, stopping entirely with a jump off of a low cliff created by a collision of torn sections of street. Five pantheons were patrolling the street, making sure that nobody interfered with the process within the disposal center. Zero drew his beam saber, and silently leapt back onto the ridge in the street. He jumped again, this time landing on the edge of a gutted glass building, and ran silently along the bottom of the emptied window frame. He kicked off of the edge of the frame, and fell with saber pointed downward. The fist pantheon was skewered, but the movement alerted one of the others, who was almost immediately sliced in half by a spinning green disc that flew from Zero's hand. Zero charge towards his saber, and grabbed it nearly as soon as it hit the ground. He turned around, and ran towards a third, killing it with a swift sword stroke. Now one of the remaining two's attention was roused, and Zero bounded high over it, and ran it through from top to bottom like the first. The last one was alerted sooner than the rest, bringing its one massive eye to see Zero charging towards it. Before the saber could cut it in half a cacophonously loud chirping roared from an audio output module mounted on the top of its head. Zero stopped in his tracks, grasping his head in pain from the overload his audio receptors were receiving, dropping his sword in the process. An airplane began to rise from the disposal center, the howl of its engines hardly a buzz over the terrible squeal of the siren. Zero managed to force himself to grab his saber from the ground, and jump forward, killing the pantheon and stopping the siren. Zero stood again, and continued towards the disposal center.
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The base was quiet again. Three regiments stood at attention in the central ops room, awaiting the order to move. A radar system tracked all movement in the city, and Ciel, Cerveau, and a few other officers sat and watched, doing their best to monitor Zero's status, as there was no tracer or Com. device that they could tap into to get more detailed information on his situation. Iris stood over the screen, biting her nails. She was utterly terrified, not knowing if he was alright or not. Though she knew she couldn't be obsessing like this, given that it was driven by the love she felt for him, she couldn't help but want him back safely. Eternities passed, both Iris and Ciel were concerned, tortured by the wait. Ciel herself hadn't thought properly of what had happened in the medical lab, but she knew that she wanted it to happen again. A plethora of enemy readings began drifting from the top of the screen, patrolling back and forth as if snowflakes. Zero's cover had been blown. Iris felt she couldn't take it anymore.
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Zero soon found the reason for the siren that had been expectorated so violently from the pantheon. Small blue specks appeared a mile down the pavement, slowly walking forward, searching for the intrusion the guard had spotted. Zero swore, and held his weapon in front of him, bracing himself for the oncoming attack. He dashed forward, watching the blue specks grow into such the hated enemy he had expected. They had also obviously also spotted him, raising the rifles mounted on their arms to meet his position. He kept running forward, but the enemies did not fire. One of the Pantheons stepped in front of the others, held up one hand, and held the other above his head, facing downwards. Zero was about to slash through the pantheon when X appeared. It was only a hologram, of course, but he himself held his hand out in the same fashion as his hologram generator's holder.
"Zero!" the hologram said in a disarmingly cheerful voice, "We thought we had lost you! What are you doing way out here?"
Zero was severely alarmed by the sudden presence of the leader of Neo Arcadia, and had to think up a cover story for himself quickly. "Well, you see, I heard that the interrogation of the Resistance leader was finished, I'm still not sure if it was, but I wanted the honor of killing her, although I was too afraid you would deny me the privilege, so I gave her a ruse that put her under the false pretenses that I had intentions of breaking her out. I had to cause a little damage to make it look believable, and I apologize for that. So I took her out, and killed her out in the wilderness. I decided that to make up for the damage, I would work for a little while as a double agent for you, and get as much intelligence as I could to combat them with." He found himself spouting out, not even quite understanding what he had said himself.
"I see, have you learned anything yet?" X's hologram asked.
"No, sir, they haven't given me privy to such information as would be useful to you yet. As a matter of fact, I know almost nothing of them."
"I understand, I assume you were heading this way to report to the operatives of the disposal center as to what you have done?" Zero nodded. "Very well, the guards here will not attack you anymore, when you get to the disposal center, report to Aztec falcon. You met him before, have you not?" Again, Zero nodded, "Good. When you have figured out the next step in your plan, I would suggest you go back to the resistance base with a good story, and immediately start getting some information, that is all." The hologram vanished, the pantheons tuned around and walked away.
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"You don't seriously trust the fool, do you master?" Harpuia stood from the sitting position he had taken to watch how the events would unfold.
"Oh no, but what better time is there to strike then when your enemy is right in your midst?" X turned toward the door. "Go ahead and kill the hostages, and order Gen. Aztec to destroy Zero when he sees fit." The door opened for X, "Oh, by the way, kill them all as painfully as possible." He left.
"Yes sir!" Harpuia saluted smartly. When the door had closed, Harpuia's hand was held in front of him, the middle finger pointing straight up. "Jackass!" Harpuia spat after him, had no fear of cameras, as there were none in the war room. He turned towards the holographic transmission system, pulling up a current satellite view over the city, and watched Zero running through the street. He scanned across the other streets, and found another reading running through the street parallel to Zero's, sneaking very efficiently and quickly past the guards. A closer satellite image caused him to nearly explode with excitement at the juicy notion of capturing the particular specimen.
A few keystrokes: its position was pinpointed, and every patrol guard in the area converged towards her coordinates with the orders to capture it. "Nothing like fresh bait to pull the beast farther into the trap!" He laughed. More keystrokes brought about a holographic display of Aztec falcon.
"Falcon!" Harpuia snapped; the General turned to face him. "There should be a new hostage coming in soon, as well as Zero, he's back and claiming to be on our side. I want the new hostage put in plain view of Zero, then kill them both very painfuly, do you understand?"
"Yes, Sir!" Falcon squawked and saluted as best he could with his awkwardly long forearm, and closed the transmission. Harpuia chuckled to himself.
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The going became easier beyond the point of Zero's interception, though he still ran to hurry up the mission. He had just played the double agent card, after he revealed his betrayal, there would be nothing between himself and neo arcadia but his own strength, and he didn't have a very effective way to gauge that yet. He had decided that his best chance was in slipping quietly into the disposal center, shutting it down silently, and removing the hostages with no fuss. The plan was full of holes, and Zero was plagued by an inkling that this decision would just make things worse, but he had nothing else to go by.
He found the entrance to the disposal center, and looked around for an alternative entrance. A small ventilation shaft high and to the right of the large double doors caught his eye, but upon climbing the pile of trash cans and rotting garbage, he found it to be no wider than the breadth of his arm. He pulled his arm back and swore. "They must have been expecting a few heroes. He looked around again, noticed the massive smokestacks, he figured they were as good an entrance as any.
Zero could never quite recall how precisely he climbed the wall; all he knew was that it involved jumps and flips as he ricocheted between the disposal center and the crumbled building standing aside it. He landed serenely on the center's top. He jumped again, landed on the smokestack, sliding himself in a moment later, leaving the infant night blackened by the clouds to herself.
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The tunnel was long, Zero descended for five full seconds, the smoke rushing past him in a thick, blackening blur. In an instant, the smoke lost the utter black color, and became a dark orange. Zero gulped as his cybernetic brain began thinking again, and he realized the many fates that could befall one who fell into a smokestack. The glow became brighter, and Zero's hands groped at the seams between the many segments His feet caught themselves on one such seam, and his hands found a firm hold. The glow, however, continued to become brighter; it was coming up. Zero pressed himself back against the wall of the pipe, and braced himself for an unknown impact. The glow was now bright yellow, and a pale blue mingled slightly with it, making a luminescent yellow-green that shone dangerously close to Zero's face. A roaring, boiling burst of flame flew past his face, engulfing him in a heat he had never felt before. An electric charge flew with it, combining the pain into a million burning needles, stabbing him, stabbing him, stabbing… It ended. Zero's pain receptors sensed the danger had passed, and had instantly shut the signal of discomfort off. He decided he would move before another explosion decided it would use Zero's tunnel as an escape route. He fell down the tunnel, and landed in a small room, dimly lit by a few small torches on the walls. Hyperstatic accelerator combustion chamber (1) he thought to himself, somehow knowing what it was. He looked for a way out, but found none other than three holes for the smokestacks. Electric blue arcs began drifting through floor and walls of the small room, stinging Zero's feet uncomfortably. He looked frantically for a way out, but only saw a pair of siphoning pistons on the wall. His subconscious mechanical knowledge told him that that was the cause of the electricity. He quickly drew his saber, cutting the both of them in half. They ground to a jerking halt as the electricity began to subside. The saber cut through the depression the now stagnant pistons sat in. Sliding it away, it fell to the floor, and Zero stepped into a large underground cavity. Pipes, massive breaker boxes, small rooms, much like the one he had just come from, and other various machines filled the room, and a large steel box nearly fifty meters in length covered the center of the room. Zero decided that the largest room would have the best chance of finding a way back up, and began to walk towards it.
Cutting another hole in the wall of the largest box revealed a red-orange glow from a boiling vat of the molten leftover metal from the recycling. Zero stepped warily onto a grated floor, used for maintenance service, hoping for another way out. A platform stood over the walkway on the end of a short staircase, a metal sheet capable of riding up and down an elevator system on the side of the wall. Zero stepped onto it, and told it to take him up, which it did obediently. He soon found himself in a fluorescently lit hall, more pipes running back and forth along the wall. He began to run through the halls, twisting back and forth, not paying attention to the layout of the plant, simply trying to get to the prisoners and get out; he had found this job to be quite uncomfortable very quickly. A large set of doors caught his eye as he passed through a particularly wide hall with a border of black and yellow lines and the words "Caution, High voltage" inscribed on its front. Zero pulled the door open, running inside he found a massive circuit breaker, as well as several generators, and many other electrical devices. His saber let out a massive flash as it cut through the center of the circuit breaker and the generators whirred to a complaining halt, and several other devices brought up their own complaints as to being sliced apart. The lights in the room and the hall outside went out, and Zero looked around more in fright of what had happened than anything else.
His breathing sounded unnaturally loud in the dark, and his "adrenaline"(2) was pumping. He dove to the side, but hit his head on a pipeline near the wall. The Monster mode is really doing its job. Ugh, my head. He pulled his thoughts together, and entered the vast cavern of secrets his body held, finding a night vision program, and activated it. A flicker of sketchy black and greenish-gray, and the system awoke He looked to the door, and watched a pair of pantheons making their way around the corner. His saber was out in a flash, quite literally: the saber, although not bright in regular vision, was severely intensified under the night vision's effect. Intensified so much, in fact, that Zero's vision went entirely white, and he couldn't see the pantheons any longer. They, however, could quite well see him. He switched the night vision off, and immediately felt a sharp burn and a strong force hit his chest, and he was flung back into the pipes against the wall again. He stood again, and sliced through the drones, seeing them by the light of his glowing green saber, which wound up a far better vision enhancer than the night vision.
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"You dirty, slimy, cretinous, son of a-"
"Now, now, let's not be vulgar here. A fine lady such as yourself should never have a reason to bring up such language in a conversation, let's be as civil as possible here."
"Will you shut the and let me kill you already!"
"Oh, but Zero hasn't gotten here yet, so why waste you? it will be sooo much fun to watch him squirm while you die!" Aztec falcon laughed at his self-proclaimed funny comment, "Although it's a shame to waste a beautiful woman such as yourself, perhaps my men could use your refreshment, hmm?"
Ciel stared at him out of narrowed eyes in the dim, auxiliary power that had been activated after the original system failed. Screwed up in disgust, Ciel's face sent as much saliva as it's inexperienced lips could muster, and spat it with hardly enough force to find it's mark on the falcon's face. "Like hell I'll give it to them!"
"Oooh, feisty, If only I weren't a reploid, I'd want a piece of you too! I think, though, that such refreshment would be welcomed by my human troops. And no matter what you say, you know you would like it as well. Nyaaaa-ka-kaka-kaka-ka!" His ugly, avian laugh echoed through her mind as he exited the disposal chamber she was in. mere seconds later, a pair of guards came, chuckling, through the door.
"Boss says we get to have some fun before Zero gets here, so let's get started." One of them said. He walked behind her, and lifted her by the pink collar of her tech vest.
"Not a bad specimen, let's see what she's hiding." Said the second guard, grabbing the front of her collar. "Release it(3)" he said.
"Bite me" Ciel hissed. But before she could try to get away, he pulled roughly at the collar, causing her severe pain, She scowled, but after another rough tug that nearly ripped the skin, she released the tech suit with a reluctant growl, and he pulled it. It broke, and she saw a sick satisfaction crawl across his face. She struggled to pull her hands free, but the first soldier struck them sharply to get them to stop. He then placed his hand on her in a way that startled and disgusted her.
"Sick perverts!" She spat, but did nothing, knowing there was no way to get out. The soldier in front of her, who had begun stroking her now bared chest, suddenly froze, and Ciel noticed a green beam of light protruding from his stomach, and resting only inched from hers. The light retreated, and the soldier fell to the ground in a heap, revealed a frowning, apparently infuriated and disgusted Zero. He swung his saber around her in a perfectly aimed arc, and very efficiently sliced the other soldier in half. He reached down, and removed the blue uniform coat from the soldiers top half, and wrapped it around Ciel's shoulders. She brought her arms across her bare breasts, and held the coat close.
:"If you're going to fondle a girl, at least get her consent first!" Zero spat at the half-dead half-soldier. He turned to Ciel, "Do you know where the hostages are?"
"Don't tell him! He'll be meeting them in hell soon enough! Nye-kakaka!" Aztec's squawking voice resonated through the room. "Now look up!" Zero and Ciel did as they were asked, and saw a large metal slab in the ceiling rumble and begin to slide down. Ciel screamed, and Zero grimaced.
Aztec's face appeared on a computer screen in the wall, he was laughing again. "Aztec?" Ciel was incredulous that he had found out about Zero's presence. "What do you want?"
"Simple, you and that flimsy excuse for a reploid, carved and on a silver platter, served to mas-" His voice was cut off as the glass cracked, and Zero's fist lay in the center of the crater-like break he had put in the screen.
"How annoying he is. Apparently he already killed the hostages, so our first priority is to kill him and get out of here." Ciel nodded, "But before that can happen, we need to stop that. He pointed to the trash compactor that was now nearly halfway to the floor.
"Why do we need to stop it? The door's over there, cut it down!" Ciel was unsettled by his lack of usual observance.
"Already tried, it was designed as a blast door(4), can't cut through it"
"Can you cut through the walls?"
"Yes, but the other side is the same material as the doors."
"I don't need that much, but cut out this side of the wall." Zero did so, and Ciel crouched between the two coverings of the wall. She pulled out the back of the password console, and began pulling and moving wires.
"We don't have time for you to crack the code!" Zero said, stepping somewhat rudely between Ciel and the console, and plunged his saber through it. It melted, and fizzled, but the door didn't budge.
"You idiot!" Ciel barked, "That never works! Not even a hundred years ago!" She was both angry and frantic now, and began looking desperately for something to do. She suddenly seemed to remember something, and seemingly magically produced a screwdriver from a small pouch on her waist. She did not acknowledge Zero's confused look, but instead grabbed the now unpowered blade from Zero's hands, and activated it, holding the screwdriver near it. The blade melted, and sagged low, creating a makeshift crowbar.
This time Zero took the initiative, and took the crowbar, and placed it to a rivet in the large panel of wall. By the time Zero got enough rivets out to bend to an opening the panel, the compressor was only two feet from the ground, and he and Ciel had been forced to lie on their stomachs.
"Where can we go now?" Ciel asked, noticing that the only way out of the room was back the way they came.
"Hopefully, there'll be a maintenance entrance somewhere above the compactor that we can use to get away from here."
"Let's hope you're right," Ciel said, crawling back through the hole in the wall and stepping onto the layer of ceiling that was now only mere inches from the ground. Zero stepped in behind her, and looked up to the ceiling where a small door and catwalk-like pathway rested above where the compactor's compacting component had begun it's descent. "What'd'ya know?" She smiled.
"Now hold on tight." Sweeping her off of her feet (literally), Zero bounded back and forth across the cylindrical room, much the same as when he had entered the plant originally. Zero landed standing straight up, and gently letting Ciel to the ground, holding her shoulder when she almost fell over.
"H-how the hell… didyou do that?" Her words were interrupted and confused by the shock she had just suffered.
"To be honest, I'm not sure myself. Let's hope that these maintenance doors aren't blast level defense." Zero ignited his weapon, and Plunged his sword into the door. To their relief, there was a loud sizzle, and the door began to melt. "Thank god!" Zero said, kicking the door out of its former container.
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Aztec waited in the dark control room for the Zero and his damsel in distress to get there. Although criminally insane, he wasn't stupid, and as such, he knew the two would be along any moment. He loved to scare; that was his favorite tactic, and he planned to utilize it to its fullest ability. All of a sudden, voices sounded outside the closed doors.
"Zero, look" A first said, "It's just that, well, you saved me n' all, and I, well, Aztec, he's totally mad, and, he's not a general for no reason! And, well, I'm just trying to say, well… Just be careful Zero!" Z cute speech, but how pathetic. That little wench wasn't half as tough as she let on in her incarceration. A second voice began:
"Don't worry. I'll be fine." It said.
"Just come back." the first chimed pathetically.
"Do I have to promise you?" The first person obviously nodded, because the second one continued, "Okay, then, I swear to you that I will come back." And finally, Aztec's little show could begin.
"Hello Zero, Having fun?" Aztec's voice rang out in the total darkness all four sides.
"Shut up and let me kill you already." Zero's voice Gave Aztec his precise location.
"Nyehehehehehehe" Aztec's attempt at a scary laugh echoed through the dark room. His long, two-pronged arms sent and electric surge through the system he had set up just for this show. Electricity arced between nodes set up around the room, illuminating the bottom half a pale blue. Zero seemed less taken aback by this than he had expected. Onto stage two:
A switch was flipped. Several copies of Zero's image appeared on all four walls around him. Four cameras were set around the corners, and they projected the four angles of Zero on the wall. Falcon laughed as Zero started, turning around to see what had happened. "Scared already? This will be fun!" Falcon laughed again, and flipped another switch, displaying a mosaic image of his face on each wall. "Want to play a game?" His faces on the wall turned towards Zero, and He laughed again, and the screens filled with pale blue electricity, and Falcon sent two long, powerful streams of electricity towards Zero, Who fell back while Aztec continued in a more maniacal laugh that more produced the fear he had originally intended his laugh to invoke. Time for Stage three:
The electrical signals between the nodes fell apart, and Aztec's face slipped slowly from the wall bit by bit. Zero pulled a beam sword from his back, Aztec jumped down, purposefully making his connection with the ground loud. He heard Zero turn in that direction, and he ran off, to the adjacent wall. He activated a remote electromagnetic scrambler(5), and Zero shut the saber off once it began to shock his hand. "That last shot wasn't fair, I'll give you a countdown this time! Ready? Five…" He continued his path in a circle around Zero. "Four…" He tightened his path, "Three…" Zero's face became barely visible, and Aztec lightened his steps so Zero wouldn't hear him. "Two…" He watched panic swirl across Zero's face, "One…" A remote switch brought his face onto the screen again, "Zero!" He spread the prongs of his arm, and closed them around Zero's neck. A small blue spark flickered at the meeting point of the two rods, Illuminating Zero's terrified face in a sharp light. Oh how he loved to play games. "You lose." Said Aztec, and sent a current up his forearm, throwing Zero back against the wall. "but of course, in every good game, you get three chances, so you get one more try! But let's make this one a little more fair. Get up, and Fight." Aztec turned off his disruptor, and reactivated the electric nodes, flooding the room with an pale, electric blue light.
Zero pulled his saber as he stood up, "Are you finally going to fight like a sane man?"
"Oh, but where's the fun in that?" asked Aztec, lunging towards Zero. Zero's saber was out in a flash, And Aztec's magnetically charged arm was held at odds with the saber. Zero turned around and swung back, but was met by the same magnetic repulsion. Each warrior leapt around the room, trying to find some hole in the fields. Aztec's mind worked like a mindless machine: up, down, stab, slash, parry down, duck, uppercut. He worked tirelessly, attacking and blocking in a relentless cycle while Zero, he moved in a blur. He had never come across an opponent so entertaining. He was quite sure he would have died several times by now had the magnetic fields not interfered. Zero leapt back, looking very closely at his saber now. Aztec was heating up, and sat still, trying to reverse the effect. Zero had opened a panel on his saber, and was fiddling with the controls inside. Soon, just as Aztec was about to attack, in fact, he resumed his fighting pose, and charged again towards his adversary. Aztec Held his two long, blade-like arms in front of him, and expected to repel Zero's attack. Instead, as Zero drew nearer, He felt himself being pulled towards the blade. Just in time, he pulled his body away from the saber, but his arms were drawn too strongly, and he felt the ends of them sever and fall off. The bastard had switched his saber's polarity!
Zero now stood on the other side of His adversary, grinning smugly. He turned around, and pointed his saber towards Aztec. "That was a fun game." He said, walking towards Aztec. "We should play again sometime!" Aztec turned, and began to run. Zero followed Suit. Aztec ran out of room, and scrambled frantically. Finally, he turned around, intending to take Zero down with him. His now very sharp half-arm pointed straight at Zero while he hurtled towards him. "But I suppose for now…" Zero continued, letting his saber impale falcon, but not before feeling a sharp pain in his shoulder, and knew that Aztec had stabbed it. "Game over." Zero grunted as Aztec chuckled weakly. With the last ounce of his strength, he ripped his saber straight upwards, crushing Aztec's central cooling unit. Zero felt an explosion engulf him, and he fell to the ground, hardly conscious anymore. The last thing he saw was a hazy silhouette running towards him.
Footnotes:
1. A Hyperstatic accelerator combustion chamber utilizes an electric charge to jumpstart a large scale combustion chamber explosion, and combines the energy to maximize the amount generated at once. It uses energy more quickly than other systems, but creates more by comparison; therefore used typically for high energy consumption facilities.
2. As a reploid has no biological components and therefore no hormones, yet were designed to be as human as possible, an "overdrive" system is installed into most mainframes, kicking in when danger is considered imminent. These are more commonly called "Monster modes" in reference to a massively popular energy drink that went under in the 2060's, after ingredients used by the manufacturer were deemed a legitimately illegal drug, and banned. These systems differ from the pain sensor systems in that they do not drive a reploid into an immediate survival instinct mode, but heighten senses and increase the thought speed. A drawback that no scientist cannot figure out how to fix, is that, very much like a human, the thoughts become irrational and disjointed. Several in the AAI (anti-Artificial Intelligence) movement argue that the drawback keeps the reploids in check were they to be threatened by a human , because if they were able to think straight, their superhuman abilities would be too far advanced, and a final revolt could quite definitely destroy all human life.
3. A human tech is very strongly integrated with the human neural system, and cannot be removed unless the human gives a conscious command to disengage the connections. Until such a command is given, the tech could very easily be considered a part of the human's skin, so to pull a tech or undertech off of a person's body would rip and peel the skin with it. Several situations have also been recorded when a tech suit was pulled into a wound, and was sealed inside the body, not allowing the person to ever remove the suit without first surgically removing the part under the flesh.
4. Blast doors, (seen often in science fiction) refer to doors closed only in emergencies. They are doors designed to withstand up to ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit, (Zero's saber only heats up to around seven thousand) but is no less malleable than steel, which most reploids can bend without serious difficulty. These doors in particular, being in a constantly high temperature facility, are always closed, in case of a meltdown
5. An electromagnetic scrambler breaks the magnetized feild that a beam sword uses to contain the blade. This causes The beam's pattern to become erratic, and, being a polarized beam of light, often is re-attracted to the handle, which can easily burn it's holder's hand. They are rather uncommon, because they are unnaturally expensive, consume extensive amounts of energy, and they pose the same level of danger to the one holding the scrambler as to the one with the saber
Author's note:
Is fun time, no? It has finally begun, and begin it did. I want major reviewage, because I really want to know what this looks like from another writer's (or non-writer's) perspective. I appreciate all who have reviewed so far, and would love to see more from you guys as well. I have so much fun writing this story, and believe me, Chapter 8 will be a doozy (Although the awesomeness may be delayed until chapter 9) and now I leave you to eat cheetos and listen to remixed opera music.
P.S.: I'm new to the rating systems of the site, and I'm unsure whether that scene with Ciel constitutes an M rating or not. If it does, please notify me so I can change it.
P.P.S.: Sorry for the delay, school started again, and I was trying to readjust for a while, I should be writing a little faster now.