ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG!
Replika-Systemfehler! Neustart...
Komplett
Initieren:LSTR-OS
It was cold... She was afraid... Afraid of what she may have unleashed...
The Eye had consumed it all. The World around them had crumbled, but they had their dance, at least. Two lone figures, sat aboard a destroyed vessel, dancing together. Memories of the past played in her artificial mind, reminders of the cruelty of the very same power that had given her life. The people of Eusan did not deserve it. Not all of them. Their leadership had turned into monsters, no matter the side... And that meant they could not be happy. They perished in a sea of flesh and darkness, wrought by the powers that be in their attempt to rid them of both her and her lover.
The Eye had opened when she ran through the hundred-twenty-seventh loop... She had killed and forgotten and run away and killed and forgotten and run away. She had found multiple keys. Her Radio had looped multiple tunes to her, activated itself randomly at certain spots. Solitary on Sierpinski. The Dorm... Then, the Itou bookstore's backroom on Rotfront. Loop two hundred thirteen. She had collected all keys on that loop, luckily. She had opened the safe thanks to that damned broadcast being the code...
She'd found the Lily thanks to it... Awoke what Isa had failed to... Then joined her beloved thanks to...
That damned CODE...
Drei, neun, vier, acht, sechs,(Drei, neun, vier, acht, sechs)
Sechs, null, ein, sieben(Sechs, null, ein, sieben)
Zwei, vier, drei, zwei(Zwei, vier, drei, zwei)
Null, Ein, Null, Sechs, Vier(Null, Ein, Null, Sechs, Vier)...
WAKE UP
She awoke with a start. Her body felt heavy. Heavier than usual, anyway. Her breathing apparatus kicked in. Errors flashed across her visual sensors for a moment as darkness and cold suddenly came into feeling around her. She blinked, grit her teeth as she felt herself unable to breathe due to the thundering size of whatever had her wrapped in its coils. She would spit to determine her orientation if she was human. Why that was a first response, she did not know.
Gritting her teeth as she trembled, she pushed. She pushed harder than she had pushed before. Her right eye burned as more errors played around in her eyes. She blinked, her hand servos screeching. She pushed through, digging, clawing with her fingers through the ice-cold earth she lay buried under. She knew she was upright now, as the gyrostabilizer in her body restarted and ran diagnostics. She just had to keep digging...
She burst out of the ground and gulped down the cold air of the place in deep, long and heavy breaths. She bowed her head, grabbing onto her heaving chest and feeling the plate armor she had worn. Memories flashed in her mind, of the nightmare, of the battles she fought, of the hundreds of times she dueled monsters and nightmares, each time just a little different, but different enough to cause her to double-over.
She trusted nothing anymore. Letting the diagnostics play across her HUD, the girl finally opened her eyes. She scanned her surroundings, seeing a blizzard around her. The wind and flakes of snow struck her in the face. She lifted her hands to shield her eyes from the flurry of snow, then kept looking around. It was naught but a desolate snowscape wherein she couldn't see two feet in front of her.
She pushed herself to her feet and pulled up diagnostics, her inventory and her map. There was no map data to see and her radio receiver module had been turned off. She turned it back on by tapping on the button on the rear of the device attached next to her ear. A cacophony of sound filtered in first, causing a ringing in Elster's auditory sensors, before it settled down into a quiet, low, staticky hum.
She sighed and tuned it to several frequencies, but found nothing. The storm either jammed the signals, or...
No time to wonder about it. Her temperature levels were rapidly dropping. She needed to move fast. This might've been another loop, a different loop. If her luck held, she might find the Penrose-512 again, seek some shelter from the hell that was this icy hellscape. And finish her Promise once and for all... No, she'd done it too many times, she just... She wanted Ariane back. She trudged on through half-meter thick snow, wading through it, her life depending on her finding shelter or withstanding the cold so her Oxidant didn't freeze in her robotic veins.
Elster...
The LSTR unit's eyes shot wide open. She turned her head, the voice having come from the right. It'd stopped her in her tracks. No way. It couldn't be, could it? And yet again, there it was, audible in her ears. Elster. The Whisper repeated and her machine heart skipped one beat. Swallowing empty as she now heard the voice from dead ahead, the girl marched toward it, before breaking into a full-on sprint.
She was stronger than a Gestalt by a country mile. Most Replika were at least twice as strong as your normal human, so her wading through the snow at a brisk jog easily turned into her breaking into a run that dwarfed any normal human's with its sheer speed. Her foot-pads crunched the snow below her. She stumbled, her warm breaths shooting out as clouds of steam from her mouth.
The voice grew louder. Elster...? it whispered, confused for a moment. At first, her words caught in her throat and she felt like she couldn't reply. She wanted to reply. She grit her metallic teeth, then forced noises out of her own vocal transmit system. Silent, whispered croaks, low-volume and almost inaudible to her in the beating of the wind around her ears.
She pushed through, just as she pushed through the snow, when she saw a Gestalt-shaped form laying on the snow a foot from her, then called out "Ariane!" stopping at the form. She peered into it. A hand, pale and frail, slowly rose from the ice, trembling, her fingers blue. Elster immediately grabbed onto the hand, then dug with her other, free hand into the snow. She pulled up the figure and wrapped her into a hug.
Hair as white as snow flowed in the wind along a white gown bearing the Three Stars of Eusan on the left side. Clad in nothing but her Cryo-sleep gown, a young woman held onto Elster, trembling, teeth clicking together as her body did its best to keep her warm. The girl weakly wrapped her arms around Elster's frame, one on her shoulder and one weakly holding her waist. She whimpered, "Elster..."
"I'm here..." The Replika responded quickly. A twitch from the girl in her arms and the two now looked each-other in the eye. Ariane was... The same beauty she had been at the start, unblemished. Her face carried no scars, no missing teeth, no fallen hair. Just beauty and a pair of blood-red eyes staring up at the girl. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes and froze just as quickly as they fell. Ariane was about to speak again, but Elster picked her up and said, "We can talk about this when we're out of this cold...!"
Ariane yelped as she felt herself lifted close to Elster's body, before she felt the wind rushing by her. Elster's burst of speed kicked in, her body going into over drive as she ran in one direction, her compass pointing North. She ran South. Safest bet to find somewhere slightly warmer was to dash South if the North was this cold already. It meant they were either back on Rotfront, or in the cold North Pole of a planet.
Ariane looked at Elster, shocked, still holding onto the Replika's neck. She buried her face into her lover's shoulder, then smiled. Even with the cold, she felt nothing but warmth from Elster. She yelped, however, when Elster spun and kicked open something. She dragged both of them inside, then immediately shut the door behind her. She gently set Ariane down, then activated the flashlight module on her shoulder and scanned the room, all while her white-haired lover looked up at her, still trembling slightly.
Elster saw a fireplace, filled with wood. She pulled out one of her few thermite flares. Taking a knee and ripping at the igniter portion, the girl closed her eyes as it flared a burning red, before she gently leaned forward, igniting one of the logs. She walked toward the door, popped it open and tossed the thermite flare out into the blizzard, before locking the door again.
She breathed a sigh, then leaned against the door and coughed. Slowly, she turned her head toward Ariane, unbelieving of what she was seeing, as Ariane crawled toward the fire to warm herself up. Her lover trembled, hugging herself and rubbing her shoulders next to the raging red flames of the fire. Elster hummed, narrowed her lips and began to wonder if this was real or yet another trick played on her mind.
She looked to the right and saw a blanket. She walked to it, picked it up and slapped it down, dusting it, before she marched up to Ariane and wrapped the thick piece of cloth around her. Sitting down, Elster wrapped her arms around Ariane, breathing lightly... And her lover affectionately leaned into it, warm, salty tears falling off her cheeks. The two looked one-another in the eye...
And Elster kissed Ariane...
The white-haired girl leaned into it, as well, giggling. Elster slowly pulled back as Ariane caressed her cheek, whispering, "I missed you, too, Els..." while the Replika processed it. It only took a moment for Elster to grow her old smile back. She bowed her head and let out a giggle that slowly turned into laughter. Laughter which Ariane quickly followed suit in copying, before the two hugged each-other. Relief. They laughed with pure, uncontained relief.
They'd done it...
"It's finally over..." Elster whimpered through the laughs, leaning her forehead against Ariane's, "We broke it... We broke the cycle..."
"You did it, Els... You..." Ariane's voice cracked as she cried tears of joy. The two looked into each-other's eyes yet again, Ariane caressing her lover's cheek with a beaming smile and warm tears in her eyes, the kind one would cry when finally released from a torment unlike any other. She cried and cried, whispering to her beloved Replika, "Thank you... So much..."
Elster held her close, kissing the top of her head, "I'm so glad you're here..." and she looked to her with concern, "Getting warmer...?"
"Mhm~..." Ariane giggled, "Much warmer..."
"Good..." Elster sighed. She ran a quick diagnostics check on herself and noted that, yes, her temperature was growing back to acceptable levels thanks to the fire. The cabin was decently-insulated, thankfully, so that meant very little heat escaped. And very little cold came in. She let herself lean back onto the floor as Ariane pushed her down and wrapped herself around her. The two pulled the blanket over each-other and fell asleep instantly, like goddamn bricks.
It was a dreamless sleep, Elster found. Dreamless was good, after the nightmares from prior. She'd wanted to lay there forever now, with her lover in her arms once more. The Red Eye. Had it given them time? Had it given them each-other back? Had it transported them somewhere else? She didn't know. She would ask It if she spoke Its language. She'd heard a whisper from It, died and was revived thanks to It, during the Final Loop.
... She Believed...
And staggered awake as the thump of gunfire echoed, muffled, from outside. Ariane woke with a start, too, to which Elster immediately stood to her feet. She drew the Einhorn, a six-shot, snub-nosed 12,7mm revolver, and ran up to the door. The fire had gone out, meaning no light was coming from within the cabin. At the same time, it seemed as though the snowstorm had passed, revealing the forest around them.
She blanked as she felt a psychic feedback wave hit her, then staggered and readied the pistol. Outside, the thunder of cadenced footsteps compacting the snow filtered in, with the thunder of gunfire getting louder. She showed Ariane to hide, pointing her to the table on the right, then she slowly opened the door and thumbed the side button on the pistol's grip. It's nose-mounted laser activated as she pointed it outside...
And she staggered as a figure with an armored mask that covered her mouth appeared, pointing the same revolver at her. Its... Her eyes shot wide open, the mask opening up to reveal the face of a familiar Replika, her short hair fluttering in the slow wind. Elster had had to crane her neck up to see her face and the figure still towered above the door's frame. She blinked and spoke, "An LSTR unit...?" then turned, "Kamerad Kommandant! I found one-" then she paused as she saw Ariane pop up, "Two! Two more survivors! A Magpie and another Gestalt!"
"Get them out here!" A familiar voice called out. Elster tensed, a glare adorning her face now. The Starling before her waved her and Ariane forward, with Elster being the first to step out. She aimed her gun at the Commander of the unit of Protektors. And the Commander turned toward her, seemingly unsurprised. She raised her hands and said, "Hello, Elster..."
"Falke..." Elster growled as the Starling beside her put her gun up to Elster's head. Unfazed, Elster called out to Falke, "Hat uns dieser Gott denn vergeben!?"
"Hunter! Lower your gun!" Falke barked, surprising Elster and the Star beside her. Both lowered their guns and looked to one-another as gunfire raked the area around, shadows moving in the corner of Elster's eye. Falke called out, "LSTR-512, I swear to you we will explain everything we need to explain to you, but both you and Ariane need to follow us! This place is not safe..."
"What do you mean?" Ariane asked as she walked out beside Elster, a similar glare in her eyes. Though, Elster soon realized, Ariane's was accentuated by her powers. Droplets of melting snow flowed around her as the girl stared at Falke, having probably read Elster's mind and found the many hundreds of duels between her lover and the FKLR Unit. Falke had immediately wanted to tell her they weren't enemies, but a roar interrupted her.
The two girls had noticed two things. Firstly:The entire Sierpinski S23 Protektor Kader was here. Several dozen STARs and several Storch units surrounded the perimeter, mixed in with units of Kolibri. 12,7mm Pistols, 10mm pistols, 8mm SMGs, riot shields, stun prods that weren't single-use and even flare-guns with 23mm grenades loaded in. A Kolibri unit that Elster soon realized was the one from the Library turned toward them, smiled and waved.
The second thing they'd realized was that Falke was not lying...
Beasts of shadowy manes, black as night, plated by bone-white armor and with burning, furious scarlet eyes surrounded the clearing they were in. The Protektor Kader had formed a perimeter around the house. Within said perimeter, there were Civilian-grade Replikas. ARARs and EULRs... Even all of Sierpinski's MHNRs were there. Beo, too, had noticed Elster. She hefted her laser and gave a wave to Elster. Elster, in turn, nodded to the battered, worn and old Mynah...
The group watched the beasts appear out of the frozen woodwork before a shotgun thundered. Sieben, the S TORCH leading one of the platoons of Protektors, met one of the beasts head-on. The strange alien creatures varied in size and shape, ranging from small, bipedal and heavily armored little reptile-like ones, to large, deformed, ugly porcupine-like creatures with bone spikes protruding out of the armor on their backs.
Elster grit her teeth and aimed her pistol, before shooting at one of the creatures twice. A tall, wolf-like one, with longer front legs. It took the two high-cal rounds to the chest, its body's dark sinew and bone torn asunder as the 12,7mm Hollow-Points expanded. Falke followed up... All six of her spears lanced up into the sky, her eyes glowing scarlet. She brought the weapons down upon the foe as her golden halo shined and shimmered. Six beasts were impaled and began to dissipate after their deaths.
Following that, a wave of psychic energy washed the snow around, melting it and catching several dozen more creatures in the blast. Falke recalled her Spears, a stress-inducing sight for Elster. She grabbed Ariane's hand as Falke ordered, "All Protektors! Riot Control!" which led to the entire Kader rearranging. Starlings and Storches with shields took up the front, putting their armored riot systems together. Behind them, their compatriots with heavier-duty firearms lined up. Falke looked to Ariane and said to her, "Go to the rear of the formation with Elster. We will hold the line, find a way to safety..."
Ariane nodded. Elster picked her up and carried her as she watched the Storches firing away with their Shotguns. Next, came the thunder of batons slamming against the armored shields. The Storches and their Starling comrades beat on their shields with electric prods that arched with energy, set to maximum. Before long, the Protektors began their push, weapons roaring, electric prods crackling and shields screeching as their foes slammed into them.
Elster had made it to the rear of the formation, as instructed. She found the entire Kolibri group working to keep the civilians at ease. The faint glow of their Bioresonance modules began to put Elster at ease, too, while the Mynahs themselves had returned to this group, keeping their massive lasers close. The tall, heavily-armored Mynahs towered twice-over over the small Bioresonance-capable machines.
The thump of shields and the roar of gunfire echoed in the distance, a brutalist piece of music that wrought a hint of fearful memories in Elster's mind. It didn't matter, right now. All that mattered was protecting Ariane and making it the hell out of here to somewhere even remotely more safe than a forest full of what felt like even more nightmares. At least she was no longer the only sane Replika, bar a couple.
"Elster...?" A voice called out. The Replika and Ariane both paused and turned to said voice. A red-haired girl with green eyes stood, covered in a jacket and otherwise-civilian clothing.
"Isa!" Ariane called out, beaming.
Isolde Itou blinked. The young woman that had attempted a hint of insanity at one point when the Elster unit first met her, stared with awe at Ariane. The white-haired beauty rode piggy-back on Elster, which Isa immediately took note to. She blanked even harder, before a hammer-blow hit her back with the thunder of a thousand slaps. A boisterous laugh escaped her lips, then said, "Mighty cold out here, ain't it, sis-" And she, too, paused.
"Erika..." Ariane beamed, "It's been a while..."
... Erika Itou, Isa's more tomboyish twin, blanked, too, then smiled and said, "Good to see you, Ari..." before noting the Elster. She whistled and said, "Your friend's quite armored, eh? And a lot of kit on her, too. Military-grade Elster?" and only got a shaken head from Elster. Curious, but unwilling to dig any deeper, she looked back to see one of the many Eules of the place run up to them.
Breathing a sigh of relief, the Eule said, "Oh, thank the heavens... You two have some nerve, running away like that."
"S-Sorry, ma'am," Isa replied, shy and slightly afraid.
"Nevermind," The Eule sighed and rubbed her face, "Let's go. Back to the civilian section, lest Adler get annoyed with us for breaking protocol..." before she turned to Ariane and Elster and a half-smile formed on her face, then disappeared as quickly as it came. She nodded to Elster and said, "That means you two, as well. We have warm clothes, so she'll be able to walk with the rest of us."
Elster nodded and marched with the Eule and the Itou twins. She looked to Isa and said, "Seems like you finally found her... I'm happy for you..."
"And I'm happy for you, too. Guessing you were looking for Ariane, eh?" The girl smiled. Elster nodded, then a faint smile crossed her lips. Isa stretched, then sighed, relieved and murmured something to herself that Elster could barely make out. She then looked around and said, "Rotfront must've gone to hell, considering the amount of demons there are around the place..."
"Seems like the Protektors can handle them," Erika commented, a faint tinge of hatred coloring her words. As if to accentuate her words, the thunder of explosions and the wails of the psychic weaponry produced by Bioresonance rippled over to them, their ears picking them up. Elster and the others clambered over a small hill of snow, only to see about two dozen humans, curled together into a blob and guarded by Starlings carrying SMGs, their weapons pointed outward.
... A lone figure sat in the snow beside the Replikas, working on a radio-transmitter system brought over by one of the Kolibris also present in the area to keep the people calm. The insanity of this place, the amount of people spread out across the sprawling tundra that had gathered and the Replika force present far exceeded Sierpinski S23's size. But Ariane and Elster could only focus on the woman working on the radio.
White-haired, with burning red eyes, elderly and beautiful as the girl riding on Elste'rs back, she was clad in a winter outfit bearing the symbols of the Eusan People's Army, the Radio-Communications Brigade of the Nineteenth Military District, Tenth Division, Rotfront. She was focused, eyes locked onto the transmitter and antenna placed in a makeshift position.
She transmitted, "Achtung! Achtung! Identifikationsnummer Ein, ein, neun, sieben, null, strich Yankee, India. Name:Yeong, Iris. Rang:Feldwebel in der Eusan Volksarmee. Telekommunikationsspezialist und Funker, Rotfront Sektor D, Interplanetare Radio Station Sechs... Requesting immediate evacuation on coordinates attached to this transmission. Bitte, if anyone is receiving this transmission, respond..."
Ariane's mouth hanged loose. Warm tears welled in the corner of her eyes as Elster slowly approached. The radio operator woman, Iris Yeong, worked the knobs and moved the antenna, not paying attention to the two girls on her right. Not until a familiar voice called out to her as if from heaven itself. Ariane spoke softly, her voice cracking, "Mama...?"
Iris's spine stiffened. She blinked, slowly craning her head to the right and looking up. She blanked, then jumped to her feet. A pair of Eules walked up to the group and helped get Ariane down, putting socks and boots onto her feet and wrapping her in a thick, warm blanket. The white-haired Yeong matron took two steps forward, then immediately, her arms wrapped around Ariane as she whispered, "Ariane... My dear Ariane..." and a smile formed on her face as she cried tears of joy.
Ariane wrapped her arms around her mother as well, tearfully smiling as she held onto her. "Mama..." She whispered quietly.
"They told me you..." Iris murmured, holding onto Ariane, "Thank God..." and she turned her head, to see the awkward Elster there, "... And this must be your LSTR unit."
Ariane blushed and yelped, while Elster paused and blanked. This was not the time for that kind of thing, she figured, but her mom soon realized, her maternal instincts be damned, what this was about. She giggled and said to both of them, "Don't let the Kolibris or Adler find out... I'm not sure how this'd be viewed-" then paused as her radio beeped. She showed them to wait, before plucking up the microphone, headset and microphone on. She spoke, "This is Feldwebel Yeong, go ahead!" and she blinked, "Who...? Listen, we don't have time! We're under attack! You're close?"
She hummed, smiled and said, "Jawohl, meine Kamerad..." before turning to one of the Kolibris and calling out, "We have radio contact! Local force is coming in to support us! Get the transmission to Commander Falke! Radio frequency 309,55!" to which the Kolibri nodded, saluted and ran toward the sounds of combat. Iris looked to the two girls and said, "We can wait for you to introduce me when we're out of this mess..." then smiled at both of the embarrassed girls.
The sound of combat grew even louder.