Ch.9

Zero cursed the manufacturers of the phoenix for not including weapons on it, and was forced to follow the jets in their blind spot, waiting for them to land to reclaim Calliope. The day dragged on, and the light began to fall to an orange hue. Zero was angered when the sunset began, and he was forced to concentrate on the mission rather than watch the twilight dance that never seemed to bore him. The dimness of the light now forced him to follow the small, rather inadequate radar on the bike's dashboard. It was fully into the night before Zero watched the small green dots slow, allowing him to catch up to them. A long runway slowly entered his vision, darkened by the blue veil that had fallen across his vision since the sun had passed to the other end of the world, and he assumed that the jets had landed there.

He left the bike behind a warehouse of corrugated steel that sat aside the runway along with several, and peered around the edge to see what was going on. He frowned when he realized his vision was useless as it was, and he activated the night vision mode he had discovered in the factory the week before, and saw with slightly greater clarity than before, and watched a team of pantheons, tinted green under the modifications his vision alteration enforced. He slipped around the corner of the warehouse, thankful that the moon cast the building's shadow onto him. He saw that the pantheon in the center, who was shorter and bulkier than the regular ones, as well as being darker, with a small mouthpiece under the glaring red eye, was carrying calliope's case. The remaining pantheons, five or six as far as Zero could see, were walking in a circle around it, carrying rather large guns, and watching menacingly for any intrusion onto the delicate transportation. He sneaked slowly around the warehouse, following them as they walked past.

They walked to a dirt road and loaded Calliope into the back of a covered army van, and the guards followed inside, to keep guard, most likely. The one who had been carrying it walked to the front of the van, and bent his legs before springing high with surprise strength given the short stature of the robot, and landing on the top with a rather loud CLAANG! The driver obviously took this as a signal to start the engine, and Zero swore under his breath as it sped away rather quickly, and he was forced to follow it on foot. The truck slowly gathered speed, and, even with the inhuman boost of speed his robotic legs gave him, Zero slowly lost sight of it. He growled, and searched desperately through the seemingly infinite recesses of his cybernetic consciousness, and, before he had realized it, he had found and activated a program and his internal eye was shoved back out, made to watch the world before it. But the world before his eyes was a blur. He sped, at three times the speed of his regular running, towards the truck, which slowly regained its former size as he drew closer to it. Some force was cascading from his foot, and shoved him very quickly forward, but he had no time to look behind him as the truck drew closer, closer…

He was too close! He realized with a gasp that he was within five yards of the truck's backside, and was most definitely drawing closer. He scrabbled desperately, turning his head around to see what on his feet seemed to propel him so quickly. He saw a glimpse of long stream of white flames bursting from the soles of his boots before his feet, whose previously deep footprints had been reduced to dragging a thing line in the dust due to the extreme force from this ability, swung out from under him; having no traction, sending him into an uncontrollable spinning motion, that slowly brought him to the ground. He finally forced his feet to stop ejecting the flames, and they sputtered red and yellow as the last bits of released fuel were ignited. He lay, panting, on the ground, before feeling a sharp, almost burning sensation up his left thigh, across the respective shoulder, and on the same side of his face He sat, grunting from the pain he felt, and looked down to his shoulder, but saw almost no damage. The tech suit on his thigh was rather badly ripped, and the skin was scraped, but no other damage could be detected. He reached up with his hand, and felt his face to feel the extent of the damage. He felt metal. He winced when the bared nerve receptors stupidly sensed that they were in danger, and pulled his hand away, slightly wet with the sticky lubricant fluids that flowed through the makeshift blood vessels in him. He suddenly lost interest in his wounds when he remembered that the truck was continuing its course away from him. He stood, and activated the system again, before being fully erect, and he felt his feet propelled upwards, and his gravity-assisted position drove his face into the ground again, flipping him over, and scraping his back across the rough road in the opposite direction he was headed. He stood, holding his pounding head, after releasing the mechanism again. He narrowed his eyes in frustration, and set his feet up on their toes, and activated the jets one more time. He sped forward again, and was fine, gliding on the very tips of his feet. He soon was able to see the truck again, and delved into the mechanism again to find out how to slow himself to an even speed with it. In the process, his vision was taken from the road, and a particularly large pebble slipped his right foot to one side, and he was forced to begin fish-tailing in the middle of the road before spinning out again. He stood again, grimacing in determination like a child hell-bent on learning to ride their bicycle that day, and set out again. This time, he managed to equalize his speed with the truck, and keep himself upright until the truck began to slow down. He was relieved, and slowed down, his systems finally beginning to cool, which caused his many abrasions rather a lot of pain. He grabbed at his side, which had been torn open on his third fall, and panted. The pantheons reemerged from the back of the truck; their leader followed, taking Calliope's case while the others took up defensive positions around him.

Zero followed them slowly, to a small building protruding from the desert landscape. They stopped for a moment at the door, seeming to insert a password, and disappeared into the blackness that so readily appeared to swallow them. Zero ran to the side of the building perpendicular to the door, and hear a mechanical whirring, slowly building up like an engine, and then fading slowly out as it moved farther and farther away. Zero realized his quarry was most definitely leaving, and drew his saber just before it blinded his night-vision tinted eyes. He shut them in pain and shut off his visionary alteration. He followed the green glow of his sword around the edge of the building, and tentatively held it out to inspect the door. His eyes instantly analyzed the door, and revealed that it was of a weak thin metal, and an x-ray view showed that an electronic lock held it shut, and would open for a password from a small panel at the side of the door. Although he could have simply infiltrated the extremely primitive technology and find the password, it was easier to simply slice the weak door away. He plunged his weapon deep into the door, and watched it begin to glow orange as small, blackened pieces sparked and fell away. He slowly moved his blade along, ripping a hole across the very top, and pushed the sword downwards to do the same to the side. Once he had gone across all four sides, he brought his red boot that had caused such trouble to him in his chasing of the truck up to the door, pushing it in effortlessly. He walked in, shutting off his saber, and his eyes were nearly completely engulfed in darkness. He reopened the night vision program, and made out well enough that he was in a small room, and a descending tunnel went off like a ramp to his left. He assumed that this was the direction he needed to go, and did.

"Where the hell is Calliope, then?" Elpizo was in an uncharacteristic rage, and his clenched fists shook violently as he restrained himself from reaching up and punching the head driver of the caravan.

"I-I don't know… I was told to come out and stay in front of the cars, Fefnir had his gun pointed straight at me…" The man was terrified, never having seen Elpizo in such a terrifying rage, and his speech was now forced to a stuttering mutter

"Damn it! Are you a soldier or aren't you! You had a platoon at your disposal, why didn't you fight back?"

"They had five platoons, sir; it would have cost pointless lives to fight back."

"You don't get it, do you? That elf is more than precious cargo; that is the turning point in the war! If we have her, we win, if they have her, they win! It doesn't matter if your troops would have been killed; we're going to get killed either way!" Elpizo's fist lost its restraint, and flew into the captain's face in sheer anger, sending him flying backwards to the ground.

"S-sir," The captain said, slowly inching himself up from where he had fallen, the rest of the troops, originally intended to defend the caravan the remainder of the distance, staring now in utter terror.

"What!" Elpizo snapped, his fists still shaking out of sheer anger.

"Z-zero, zero was there too… Uh, he almost saved her, but they g-got away, and he ran off after them…"

"Damn!" Elpizo's usually tacky, gentlemanly manner was falling apart, and he was quite prepared to kill the next person who so much as looked at him wrong.

"Elpizo, why are you angry, Zero will be fine, and he'll also get Calliope back, there's nothing to be angry about." Ciel interrupted, not understanding, and not liking very much that he was angry about zero's being there.

"You put far too much trust in that boy, Ciel." Elpizo turned his head around to see her where she stood among the three platoons all prepared for defending the precious cargo that was no longer there. "He'll give away his position, they'll kill him, and know they've been followed, they will boost security, and we will never get past it. He'll be the reason we lose this war."

"You put far too little trust in him, I happen to know for a fact that he is more than capable. I have no doubts about Calliope's safety." Ciel's hands were on her hips as she looked at the cynical man. "We have no idea where they are now, so backup will be useless, we should all return to the base and try to see if we can do anything to help Zero." She turned sharply, and walked through the crowd of soldiers that parted for her, heading back to the trucks that had carried them there. She stepped inside the foremost one, sitting in the passenger's side seat. The expression on Elpizo's face froze the remaining soldiers, but his grip of fear slowly lost its control over some of the group, and they meekly backed away, filing into the backs of the trucks while the drivers sat in the cabs, starting the engines, and waited, not sure if they should leave the other half of the soldiers who remained frozen by his gaze, or take them along.

"Drive." Ciel said in her tone(1), not turning her gaze from Elpizo's.

"Um, yes ma'am." The driver said, knowing not to deal with her if her voice was like that. Elpizo's face became even more twisted and furious, watching the backs of the trucks, slowly grumbling away into the distance on the gravel road. He focused his gaze on the backs of the heads of the soldiers who had turned to watch the other half of them drive away.

"Well? Are you waiting for something? We're going to stop that moron right now. I don't care what it takes, now get in those trucks." His voice was calm, sharp, and articulate; obviously he was taking special care not to break down and destroy them all. The soldiers followed his orders, filing into the backs of the trucks, and starting the ignitions.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever, and the light of his saber was only capable of so much; Zero felt slightly scared. He forced his feet to continue forward, unsure whether he should or shouldn't. The light of his weapon seemed to be growing slightly stronger, and he was able to see slightly more. He found that his sword was no stronger, but that a small pool of light from a doorway still a good way in the distance supplemented the light, making it slightly easier to see. He hurriedly shut off his saber and ran forward eager to get away from that somewhat upsetting tunnel. He slipped himself up against the wall right inside the doorway, peering into the lit room, and inwardly frowning at what he saw. The pantheons swarmed all about, loading things into a large red fuelbacker(2), giving orders, making cargo checks, and performing other small tasks. Zero guessed there to be several hundred, and many carried a weapon of some kind, a few even stood guard in PSUs. Zero saw the short one with the mouthpiece standing next to the fuelbacker, yelling orders to the swarm of blue reploids apparently under his command. He was barely able to glimpse Calliope's case, under a flat-beam cage(3) Zero frowned, and sat still, waiting for a chance. The whole time the number of pantheons slowly diminished, when most seemed finished, several, perhaps even the majority of the, came out, gathered around another flat-beam cage, this one on a large hovering transport, and zero saw through the yellow haze of the beams a large stasis pod that held nothing but what looked to be a green bubbling liquid. The pantheon team loaded it into the truck, ran forward, and jumped into the next car. The short one walked by the car, and looked around one last time before jumping into the fuelbacker, and shutting the door.

A screeching jerk and a slow chuga chuga tshhhhh… told Zero the train was about to start. He ran forward, and leapt, landing on the fuel tank, and immediately began to flit swiftly back and forth between his feet as the thin metal sheeting had begun to heat up. He ran forward, and landed with a muttered swear word and a clang on the fuelbacker. So much for the element of surprise He frowned, and drew his blade before plunging it into the roof. He felt the train begin to slowly pick up speed, and looked up to see a low tunnel with no more than one foot of clearance waiting for him. He frowned, and shoved his saber to the hilt into the metal that was hardly glowing orange now. He flattened his body as best as he could to the train, and prayed to God it would be enough to pass under it. The train passed under the door, and Zero felt his back brushing lightly against the roof. He grimaced as the train picked up more and more speed, slowly causing his back to heat up and grow very uncomfortable. Soon, he heard a high scraping noise, and managed to turn his head around slightly and see sparks beginning to leap from his back, and a burning sensation poked at it, causing him to grunt in pain. All of a sudden the blast metal, which had held his blade in place up until that point, became soft enough for his saber to slip back, and his feet to hang slightly off the edge of the car. His back was now lowered out of range of the roof, but his feet were heating up very quickly from the fuel tank, which was now at almost its maximum heat. He grimaced from the pain in his feet, pulling up on the handle that kept him rooted to the roof, but only managing to tear a greater gash across the roof, and dropping his feet back farther. His statistical displays flashed red before his eyes while danger warnings flashed crazily this way and that. His feet continued to burn crazily, and his mind raced frantically, in a desperate struggle to free him of that terrible pain.

He swore very loudly as the saber slipped back again. He was forced to flip the switch, turning the saber off, and letting himself fall back to the unbearable heat of the fuel tank behind him. He felt his feet hit the white hot metal behind him, and he screamed loudly as he activated the jet propulsion system in his quickly charring feet, and managed to push himself forward to grab the handle to the back door. He ripped the door open with all his might and swung inside, shutting the door behind him as quickly as possible. He slumped to the floor, panting heavily. When he looked at his feet, he realized for the first time; they were completely black, twisted and broken. Even the pain sensors were shot, which may have been a good thing, given the endless pain they would be treating him to now if they were still there. His attention was pulled away from his feet, however, by a noise on the other side of the car. A pantheon-BK-081 series(4) stood in the doorway to the next one, staring straight at him. Zero forced his blackened feet to lift him, although he felt incredibly unstable on them, as if they would break at any moment. He reignited his saber, and stood managed to raise his head just in time to see the monster charging towards him. His eyes widened in fear, and he instinctively pushed off with his feet, only to feel something snap inside them, cutting the energy flow to his legs, as well as the height of his jump, drastically. He screamed in agony as he felt the bottom half of his body being pinned back to the door. Several things cracked, tore or fizzled, the black lubricant fluid flowed freely onto the golden arm that held his completely mangled body against the heated metal. He took his saber, still clutched in his right hand, and plunged it into the pantheons head, resulting in its immediate desisting of all action. He fell to the floor as the pressure of the arm was released and barely managed to shut of the vessels and wires that had been torn before his auto-repair program overrode his other systems, and he shut down.

Tak tak tak… Jordan's fingers flew across the keyboard of her personal laptop, windows full of classified information opened and closed on the screen. Zero had been gone nearly a day, and it was quickly made known that Jordan was to do nothing in the way of trying to find him, so she had decided to do some digging. images of her mother, the long deceased uncle she never knew about, the final weapon prototype, they all blurred by, yielding no useful information. Jordan's eyes narrowed as she growled, knowing now that she would have to resort to hacking. She hated having to hack; the first time she ever did it, she was caught almost immediately afterwards, and let off with a month's restricted activity and ear-bashings from several of her superiors. She had managed not to get caught the one other time she had been forced to do it (To find out a boy's phone number), but she knew that all it would take would be a simple systems sweep within the next hour (And they were done ten times a day) to find her out. She was terrified of being caught, knowing that she would be dishonorably discharged, perhaps even brought up on charges of treason, but the way Zero had acted… She never should have trusted that stupid robot. She couldn't just let that go, what he had done to her mother. Why? What had made her mother flip like that? Why was Zero acting so strangely before?

While her mind had been wandering, her fingers had moved outside of her consciousness, and a box sat before her, asking for a login ID, and a password. She looked around her to make sure there was no-one watching her, and typed in the override code she had stolen so long ago. "Loading" was all the screen would say… The dialogue window turned green: Accepted! The code had worked; Jordan was now in Ciel's personal account. It was a piece of cake from thereon to access her personal logs, top level information, everything that belonged to Ciel. First, the commander's personal log entries… She selected the latest entry:

July 29th,

I'm afraid for Zero, he won't hardly talk to me any more, ever since the power plant. I'm scared something like when he touched my wound again. He's out on the balcony now, like always. I think Allouette just went out to see him. It's only a matter of time before Iris goes out to see him. Whenever they're near each other, I'm holding my breath. If Zero were to find out who she really is, I have no idea what could happen to him; I mean, if the mere memory of blood can make him nearly short-circuit, the memory of a past lover, one who died, nonetheless, could even kill him. I'm sorry I'll have to cut this entry Short, it's almo-… the screen flashed and went blank. Jordan's eyes widened, and she looked around; her mother stood, a wireless plug in her hand.

"You know they won't stand for that again." She said with an obvious hint of anger.

"I wouldn't have had to if you would've just told me what was going on." Jordan narrowed her eyes at her mother. "According to Ciel, you were Zero's lover at one point."

"Yes, and I died by his hand." The cold air refused to leave her mother's voice. "Ciel resurrected me ten years ago, I met your father, and then we adopted you."

"So why can't he know this? Is there something else?"

"Nothing other than that when he was with Ciel overnight, he touched her gunshot wound. It sent him into what appeared to be severe Synov-shock(5), Ciel was afraid it could cause serious damage, or even kill him, if he learned too much too quickly. Besides that, it would make our lives incredibly complicated if he were brought back into the picture." She said, though Jordan thought it was far more complicated to leave so many loose ends as they were, but she said nothing, for her mother's eyes had begun to fog up with the artificial tears of a reploid. Jordan stood, walked over to her mother. Being sincere, and feeling the situation to be a bit ironic at the same time, and embraced her now sobbing mother. Jordan now began to understand why her mother had been so emotional before, and began to cry herself. Time disappeared; the two forgot how long they stood there, nearly forgetting why they were sad, just feeling confused, the daughter's soft, warm skin against her mother's cool synthetic replacement. It wasn't long, though, before the metal door to the outside hall flew with a clang against the entrance hall, and Ciel came flying in:

"Iris! Jordan! You two need to come see this!" Her face glistened with sweat, and she panted as if terrified; her face was ivory white.

"What's going on?" Jordan asked, stepping away from the embrace she and her mother had been holding. Her mother looked up in concern as well.

"I think Zero just died."

Zero's A.I. systems had finally managed to reconnect the majority of his systems, and he was brought back to consciousness. The first, and most predominately, annoying thing he noticed was that he had no waist or legs. The second was that over an hour had passed since he had lost consciousness, and he desperately needed to get moving. He lifted himself up on his hands, sheathed the inactive saber that was left beside him, and began to walk. Before he had stepped forward twice, however, the momentum of his mutilated torso swinging back and forth, coupled with his being so unused to having no legs, caused him to fall flat on his face. He pulled himself up with groans of pain, and looked around for a better alternative to trying to walk his way to the front. He noticed several coolant pipes on the ceiling of the car. It's better than nothing, I suppose… He bent his arms and leapt as high as he could, resulting in far too much momentum, and his head smashing into the roof. He fell back with a loud thud, and lay for a moment, wishing he had his legs back. He forced himself to stand again, and pushed off with his hands again, though less violently, this time barely managing to grab a large pipe running down the middle of the ceiling. The pipe, however, had very different Ideas, and he screamed as it bent under his hands, snapped in two, and began spewing N-freeze(6) all around. Zero screamed in pain, and fell to the floor again, his right forearm frozen stiff. He held it up, staring at the white frost covering it, glistening in a rainbow of colors from the nanobot components. Although he was angry about it, he was about to admit defeat; he had one arm, no legs, no means of movement, and the coolant flow was just shut off. Before long, the caboose would overheat, and the entire train would be destroyed. That was all he needed, he shut his eyes, and was preparing to shut his systems down.

All of a sudden, His right forearm tensed up, shaking violently, and beginning to tingle. Presently, beads of light began running up and down his arm as if guided by wires. He stared, wide-eyed, as his arm began to glow brighter and brighter, it began to sting, then to burn. He was so shocked he didn't even notice the pain. It stopped. The ice was still there, his arm ceased to burn, sting, or even tingle. There was no light left over, nothing. He tried to bend his fingers… Crik crak… The ice broke and fell away; his hand was functioning perfectly. He positioned it under him, and used it to help lift himself up. He decided it would be best for him to get out before the entire car froze over. He managed to walk himself out just about at the time the first half of the train had completely frozen over. He 'stepped' onto the small connecting walkway between the two cars, and saw that the train was out of the tunnel now and the sun had begun to rise. He had no time to watch the sunrise, however, and was forced to balance himself on one hand, which worked surprisingly better than he thought, to open the door with the other. The familiar Hiss… of the door was hardly audible over the screaming winds, and Zero was happy to see a much more intact room than the one he had just left.

He stepped inside, not paying much attention to the contents of the room, and was repaid for his neglect with a BK pantheon only missing him by virtue of the fact that his height was severely reduced. He instinctively drew his weapon and stabbed the thing without hesitation. As the body fell, he saw three other pantheon guards running towards him, guns raised. He jumped with his arms, high over the pantheon's heads, and came down, attempting to stab one through the head. His aim, however, was impaired due to his lack of legs to balance him, and his saber stuck through the floor of the car. He pulled it out and swung around, cutting two of his opponents in half. He leapt off the ground, a bit surer of his aim this time. It was still off. All he could manage to do was grab the circular head with his right hand as he flew past, and slam it into the back wall. For some reason the light impact of this was enough to kill it. Zero was confused until he looked at its face: frozen solid. There was a cold, white mist leaking from his hand.

He wasted no time in walking out of this car, and into the next, where he was met with an even larger set of pantheons guarding it. He disposed of them with no more problem than their counterparts in the previous car, and proceeded to the next. As he opened the door, he noticed that this car was completely empty, aside from the larger flat-beam cage he had seen previously. He walked in, quite happy to be able to take a break. His rest was interrupted, however, when several streams of red light streaked very near to him. There was a host of twenty of more small glass lenses looking at him form across the car, glittering with the intention of not missing again. He rolled quickly back, barely avoiding the red strings that attempted to sever his limbs. He saw nowhere to go but up; so he did. He grabbed the corner of the roof, swinging himself upwards, and landing with a clang on the red covering of the car, Feeling the wind, previously held back by the cars, hit him like a massive bludgeon. He rolled back again, smashing into the previous car with a thud. He leapt back up to the roof, this time with a stronger grip than he had last time, and his systems auto-magnetized(7) his hands to the roof, making it much easier to move. He made a running leap across the first gap he came to, and landed with a loud clang on the next one. This apparently aroused some attention inside, and a series of clanks, rustlings, and various other noises that imply general movement that barely reached his ears above the clatter of the train and roaring of the wind, the obvious his of the doors opening was heard, and three pantheons in High-level PSUs came out, the red eyes in the center of their heads fixated strongly on him. He gulped, but still reached up for his saber, readying himself for the attackers' first volley. He had trouble holding himself straight up with only one hand to protect himself from being whipped about by the rushing wind. He steadied himself again, and held his blade before him just as the pantheons charged. He leapt over the first on to reach him, over the short blade in its hand intended for him, and grabbed the PSU's engine, intending to swing around and cut the drone's head off, but before his saber reached it, he felt the thrust of the PSU give out, and he was jerked along as he began to stop while the train continued onward. He realized with a gasp that his hand was frozen to the engine, which was covered in a solid, white frost. He snapped his hand off of the engine just before its wearer landed with a sickening CRACK and continued to roll off, leaving him on the car previous to the one on which he had come out. He ran forward again, leaping high and, with a circular slash, severed the legs of the remaining two pantheons that had come charging after him, and landed rather composedly on the second car to the engine. Presently, there was a loud roaring from the back of the train, and Zero looked back to see the fuel backer being destroyed by the engine. The train quickly began to slow down, and Zero continued onward, finding it much easier now that the wind wasn't rushing by so much. He leapt onto the last car, and was incredibly glad to not meet any resistance from within. He jumped down in the gap between his car and the engine, and did his best to calm down as the door slid open to the dark room inside.

Footnotes

A subtle intonation perfected by Ciel that will strike such fear into another that any order given to them will be followed out on the spot. She makes good use of this voice in her military career, as well as to perfectly mask her southern accent, one of her most deeply guarded secrets.

A type of car for trains that use a solid fuel caboose (A caboose that pushes the rest of the train in front of it by burning a solid mass of fuel through a rocket engine) set directly adjacent to the solid fuel caboose. Due to the extreme amount of heat put out by a solid fuel caboose propulsion system, it is heavily armored with blast level metal, and is, therefore, ideal for high security or top secret transports.

A cage crafted of electron firing paths across a sheet of Minovsky particles (a particle whose research was inspired by the 'Gundam' television series) which keeps the electron beams on their paths. The combination of electron bombardment and the Minovsky disruption cause a great deal of contained radiation that, when crossed, can cause severe third-degree burns in a matter of a half-second.

A BK(big knuckle) pantheon is much the same as a regular, except for the major attachment of a monstrous set of gold-plated armor around the right arm. The armor would naturally be far beyond the capacity of a pantheon to lift; therefore an extensive hydraulic system helps to support it. A force field can be erected in front of the arm, though this was originally meant as a defensive apparatus, it is more commonly used as a wider bludgeon when the basic fist is insufficient.

Synov (Synaptic Overload) Shock is a condition in which the artificial synapses of a Reploid's brain are overloaded with information and misfire, sending the wrong signal to the wrong synapse, and launching a chain reaction that overloads the brain, sending the nerves and muscles into a state rather reminiscent of a human's epileptic shock. It was named Synov shock for the scientist who discovered the condition; whose name was, rather ironically, Mikael Synosevyk.

N-freeze is a super-powered coolant used in high-heat items (Such as a solid fuel caboose). It uses a combination of liquid nitrogen and nanobots to keep cold for days at hundreds of degrees centigrade. N-freeze nanobots are able to perpetuate low temperatures through their own energy, and therefore can be circulated around the object that needs cooling, only needing to be taken out of contact for a few moments to cool itself down again

Auto-magnetization is a system that holds a reploid to a metallic surface through electromagnets in the palms and soles, and will only release when the reploid's own muscles pull it away.

Author's notes.

I'm so incredibly sorry this took so long, school, sickness, and my lingering lethargy from NaNo snowballed, and it took me forever to write. I hope the next one'll be up faster. Thanks so much for your continued support, the next chapter won't be a disappointment, promise.