Chapter 6: An Unlikely Partnership
"They're taking everything from me... from us."
It was that familiar voice again. It was echoing through a black void. Vile heard it again, as he had been for the past couple of months. The same dream, or parts of it, over and over again. He didn't always find himself in the pod, looking up at what was transpiring. At times, he was outside, watching things play out from above, looking down at the scientist speak to his lifeless creations. At other times, it was simply darkness with only the voice reverberating in his mind. It was blackness this time around. Vile was incorporeal. He had no body. He could not see. Only hear.
"They wanted war machines. That's all they ever wanted! The bastards!" the last word of each sentence lingered on abnormally long, making the experience even more eerie and disturbing to the slumbering Reploid.
"So I failed you. Just as I fear I've failed the rest of you."
'The rest of you... What does that mean?' Vile's thoughts were hazy as he had considerable trouble remaining coherent and focus on something other than the dream.
The question remained unanswered, as they did at the end of each restless night that had come before. Slowly, his systems began reactivating. His eyes opened behind the visor of his helmet to stare up at the ceiling of Nana's maintenance room. The overhead lights had been switched on, almost blinding the Reploid had he not adjusted his visual sensors out of reflex. The next thing that registered with the slowly awakening and disoriented Reploid made him growl in anger.
He was restrained, fastened to the steel table in the center of the room like some lab project! Immediately, he began resisting the bonds that held his wrists and feet in place. It was of little use. His limbs barely responded, and even if they had, they would not have been able to snap the thick metal that kept him strapped tight against the steel surface.
"Wow, wow, now! Calm down!" an annoyingly high-pitched voice shrieked as Vile struggled. "Calm down, you hunk o' junk!" the repetition was followed by a knock to Vile's head by some kind of tool. The impact made the renegade focus on the strange Reploid leaning over him. Professor Gaudile was standing on top of two, stacked boxes, so he could properly reach his patient.
He was a strange sight, to say the least. He had been designed to look like a platypus and – as if his creators hadn't been cruel enough already – his color scheme had been determined to be a mix of bright reds, yellows and whites. His hands only had three digits each and his beady eyes were hidden behind large goggles that were attached to his temples. Gaudile probably used those whenever his vision needed protection or enhancing while he was doing whatever it was that the scientist did any given day. Wrapped around his rather girthy waist were the metal strips that held his backpack securely in place. The purple Reploid then noticed the four mechanical arms that were attached to the pack. Each moved separately from the others and came with a different tool the professor no doubt used in his work.
"Who are you?! The hell are you doing to me?!" Vile was still dazed and confused, though not quite as aggressive anymore.
The short but stout Reploid tilted his goggles up to his forehead to reveal his eyes. "I am professor Gaudile, scientist extraordinaire," his introduction was filled with pride. Though the good professor saw this little project as a low-point in his career, he still felt the need to gloat. "And this is my assistant – daughter some might even say – Cinnamon," a palm motioned towards the opposite end of the table from him.
Vile's gaze met the large, baby blue eyes of a young, female Reploid. Had she been human, she would have appeared to be no older than fourteen. Her face was almost angelic, with pale skin and very long, blond hair. Her body had been crafted to resemble the mechanical version of a nurse's outfit, complete with a hat displaying the typical, red plus.
"A pleasure to meet you, mister Vile," she had an intoxicatingly sweet voice. The innocent young girl's fingers were laced together and rested in her lap, allowing her to present the renegade with a courteous bow.
"As for what we're doing to you: we're patching you up, genius," Gaudile continued as he raised the blunt implement he had hit Vile over the head with. He recognized it as a tool that could be used to access and repair certain internal systems of a Reploid. He tilted his head to the side, to finally notice Nana standing in the doorway. unsettled by all the commotion.
"You could 'a warned me your old friend was a freaky midget with a nurse fetish, woman!" Vile snapped, his mood as charming as ever. The remark was met with a variety of responses. Nana couldn't help but giggle a little, while the scientist raised his voice in anger. So wild was his fit that the platypus almost tumbled down from his boxes. Cinnamon, on the other hand, didn't seem to know what was going on as she let her eyes slide from one Reploid to the next. Her lips simply pursed to add to her questioning expression.
"You're lucky I was willing to do this, rust bucket! The state you were in, I'm surprised you didn't get your head blown off pulling some of the stunts Nana told me about!"
"Professor, please, you'll rupture another exhaust pipe if you yell like that," Cinnamon's cute voice was sufficient to get Gaudile to take a deep breath and visibly calm down.
"Yes, you're right..." Another huff and the professor bent over Vile's chest again to continue his work. "I'm almost done. You'll be pleased with the results I think." After a few more sparks from whatever he was doing inside the renegade's body, Gaudile rose up again. He proceeded to close a small patch covering some circuitry and started sealing the armored plating up again.
"What about my weapons?"
"I fixed the ones that needed it. However, you'll need to stock up on ammo on your own. Never seen so many guns on a Reploid before..." the professor felt no small amount of guilt over having fixed the Maverick, as indicated by that final muttering.
Once he finished, he asked Cinnamon to release the bonds, allowing Vile to slowly sit up. His joints moved smoothly, no longer clogged by wear, tear and dirt. He looked down to inspect the rest of himself as soon as he had swung his legs over the side of the table. His purple and black frame was no longer covered with scorch marks and dirt. The armor wasn't littered with dents and blemishes. He looked brand new. The renegade placed his booted legs on the steel floor and got up off the table proper. His balance had been perfectly restored as well! He was light and energized. He felt good. He felt ready for action. It had been so long since he had last felt that way.
"Hm. You actually did a good job, doc. Better than ya look capable of," Vile raised a hand to inspect his fingers. The flexing motion revealed that even the digit that had been bothering him by having a faulty servo inside of it, now moved fluidly. If he didn't know any better, he'd think he rolled off of the assembly line.
Gaudile winced and reflexively lifted his arms to cover his face at Vile raising his hand, almost thinking he was going to be struck. But, he relaxed when the former hunter instead patted his shoulder twice; albeit roughly.
Nana smiled at the sight before nodding her head at Gaudile. "Thank you again, professor," she then stepped aside as Vile walked out of the maintenance room, eager to stretch his legs.
"We need to get going now," the professor began packing up the tools he had brought with him. Once it was just the three of them, though, his voice dropped a few levels in volume. "Erm, Nana? I really did repair every weapon that trigger-happy Maverick has. Which means he's primed and armed now. Please, be careful."
Gaudile's eyes widened in slight surprise when the taller Nana leaned down to hug the odd Reploid. She pecked his cheek once and stood up straight again with a smile. "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. You know I can take care of myself."
The professor's cheeks had flared up in a slight blush, though it vanished as he nodded, trusting the operator's judgment. "Alright. Say your goodbyes, Cinnamon! We're going home!" Gaudile shrieked as he began waggling over to the front door.
The young nurse shared an embrace with her friend before turning to leave with her father. "Goodbye Nana, I'll miss youuuu!"
After the door slid shut, Nana realized she was alone again. She couldn't help but sigh at the dire situation. But, at least her research had yielded some results. The operator returned to the largest chamber in the apartment, where her impressive hardware rig was still humming monotonously as it awaited her return. With a delicate exhale, she slipped back into her chair.
"So, found anything useful in those records?" the renegade immediately inquired as he approached her. With crossed arms, he watched the monitor closely.
"As a matter of fact, I have. Most of the files were classified, but very few were important enough to protect thoroughly. So, it didn't take me long at all to decrypt the files," Nana rotated her chair to face the terminal and her fingers began gliding over one of several virtual keyboards with uncanny speed.
"And?"
"I think I found the report you wanted; on the explosion in Central City? The clean-up crew present hadn't bothered filing a report until several days later, and only one of them took the trouble of being at all accurate."
"Weird. It's been a while, but I could swear standard procedure back then was for all members of a crew to file a basic report, no matter what the work they'd been doing was. Central Command loved all their blasted paperwork, so they checked up on staff all the time," Vile raised an eyebrow underneath his helmet.
"Right, but there's no real way to check why only one of them followed procedure. The report itself doesn't say much. It talks about a scientific experiment gone haywire. Apparently they were working on some kind of new micro-laser which would be used in the fabrication of highly miniaturized pieces of equipment. The laser was still a prototype and the clean-up crew found evidence of an overload in a power core. They were able to confirm the core was of the correct type to power the laser and filed it all an accident," Nana tapped a few keys to bring up relevant material.
"The entire block had been reduced to gravel and debris from the explosion. Not much else was found on the site, so no further, extensive investigation into the incident was done," Nana had the contents of the report displayed on one of the smaller viewscreens framing her main monitor, while the larger canvas was filled with a number of photos and looping video footage of the site. "Recognize any of this?"
Vile felt a strange throbbing sensation in his head, though it was barely noticeable. "Hmm... Yeah. I think I remember some of the buildings in the background. And how clear the sky was that day," the renegade was trying hard to remember more about the elusive dream. It was strange, given how often and for how long he had been getting them, it was hard to recall details from the dream whenever he was awake. "Any mention of Hunters having been on-site at the time of the explosion? Or did they find their remains?"
Nana's response was a simple shaking of her head.
"This isn't making any sense. An explosion takes out an entire city block? They then find some 'evidence' that it was a laser overload and they call it a day?" Vile shook his head. "No, that ain't right. They would have turned that whole blasted site upside-down."
Nana was unsure what to say. She couldn't really get much more from the report itself. "Why are you interested in this place? Were you there?" she glanced up at him, a little suspicion present in her eyes as she wondered if he'd caused the accident.
Vile turned away from the monitor to begin pacing along the center of the room behind Nana. The palm of one of his hands rubbed along the knuckles of the other. "I ran into a Hunter ambush a couple months back. Like a complete dumbass I got myself roughed up pretty bad. Since then, I've been having strange dreams. Most nights, when I enter sleep mode to recharge, I see a scientist Reploid talking to deactivated Reploids in pods. He's frantic, injured, maybe a little delusional. He seems to expect me to reply about his ramblings about danger and people coming to kill him and his 'creations'."
"'Me'? What do you mean 'me'? You're in one of those pods?" once again, the operator pivoted her seat to face him.
She only received a distracted nod as confirmation. "Sometimes the dream is from the perspective of one of the Reploids in the pods. I just... get this feeling that that's me in there, decades ago."
"What happened next?"
"The scientist ejects something unstable from his terminal. Maybe a bomb, I dunno. He grabs it from a terminal while he's ranting. When several Maverick Hunters storm in, they gun him down. The bomb explodes and takes the whole building with it," Vile finished just as he stopped his fidgety maneuvering, and returned to the operator's side.
"And you're sure this isn't just your mind playing tricks on you? Damage to your electronic brain can cause stored memories to corrupt, warp, get out of sync or even merge, giving you the illusion that you're seeing things that actually happened."
"I ain't crazy, alright?!" Vile snapped, though the outburst was brief. "I never dreamed before," Vile shook his head. "Definitely not like this. It feels like a real memory. A long lost memory. I didn't have any recollections older than me standing in line to enlist as a Maverick Hunter," the renegade's visor was focused on the report, as he read over the first few lines again.
"What's your deal anyway? What got you mixed up with crooked Hunters?" Vile suddenly realized that he had no idea what her part in all of this was.
"You've heard of the incident here on Giga City half a year ago, right?"
"Yeah."
"The leader of our rebellion against Epsilon's uprising, Chief R, was killed atop Central Tower. We'd taken down Epsilon and thought all the fighting was finally over," Nana looked down at the floor while her voice saddened at the horrible memory. "Redips, a colonel with the Maverick Hunters and superior officer in charge of Hunter operations here, turned out to be a traitor. He had a copy chip, enabling him to transform like new generation Reploids can. He was out to get the Supra Force Metal that was found here. That had been his goal from the start. He just needed Hunters on the inside to do all the heavy lifting and the scouting for him, and to have an excuse to send Hunter reinforcements when all was said and done. When Chief R signaled his vessel for landing, Redips opened fire and murdered him."
"They had that plastered all over the news, I remember. What does that have to do with these records? Not like the guy behind it all needs to be exposed. The media did all that already. 'Sides, ain't he dead?"
"Yes, but a few days ago I was working in Central Tower and found evidence of an illegal, outgoing transmission. Someone had sent highly classified information on our weapons systems and other defenses to a vessel which could only have been Redips'. No one in the Rebellion at the time had the skills needed to pull that off, and it's only logical that Redips' possible accomplice would also be a Hunter. One that was in on the whole scheme from the start."
"Lemme guess. When you showed this to someone at Hunter HQ, they immediately put a lid on it? They wouldn't want that to get out and damage their shiny reputation," Vile snorted slightly as he recalled the hypocrisy the higher-ups in the Hunter chain of command suffered from.
"Hm." Nana nodded before proceeding. "So, I set out on my own, and I managed to find a lead that pointed me to the archives. That's where things went a little awry," Nana took a deep breath before proceeding. "I was at the archives to track down the Hunter who might have done this. One of the last personnel rosters before Eurasia's impact had been stored there and the transmission the perpetrator had sent contained a personal tag. To get to my point..." Nana paused for a moment as she pressed a few keys and brought up the roster she had stolen from the archives.
She continued to scroll down until she reached the tag she had been searching for. Once she'd tracked it down, she opened the file and some basic information on a Reploid appeared on the screen. The Reploid was a young-looking, basic model with blue eyes, slightly tanned skin and a dark green color scheme. His mugshot did not give the impression he was capable of anything illegal at all, let alone treason of the highest level.
"This is where it gets a little weird," as Nana continued, Vile planted a hand on the back of her chair and leaned forward to follow along. "There's nothing strange about this Reploid. He's not even a combat model. He was part of a clean-up crew stationed in South City. But when I saw that tag again, I felt like I'd seen it somewhere before? I compared it to the tag of the Reploid who wrote the report on the explosion. It's the same Reploid," she continued, highlighting both numerical sequences in their respective files.
Vile fell silent as he tried to wrap his head around this. "He was stationed in South City? The fuck was he doing in Central, then? And what? He's been a part of clean-up for decades, but decided to be a Hunter around the time of Epsilon's uprising?"
"Like I said; weird. He's not a Maverick Hunter. Never was, yet he displayed the skills of one or something similar to transmit the sensitive data on Giga City. Then, he's also worked sites far removed from one another without his home address ever changing; which is a whole other mystery."
"What's so mysterious about his address?" Vile straightened his back again and crossed his arms over his chest.
"Think about it, Vile. South City was right by the impact of the Eurasia Colony. If you think West City had it bad, South was completely destroyed. It's just a ruinous ghost city in the middle of an ash wasteland now."
"Alright, so this guy doesn't check out at all. What do we do now?"
"We find out more. I tracked down his residence," Nana once again changed the files and images being displayed on her monitors. This time, she showed him satellite imagery of the location, as well as pictures of what the home had been like before the colony's fall. "If we're lucky, there's enough left of it for you to search through for more information. There's been plenty of cases of looters heading into South City, but by and large, they've left regular homes alone since it's just not worth rifling through them."
"So this 'grunt' also managed to survive the destruction of his home just to pop back up again as Redips' accomplice?" Vile scoffed. "Yeah, alright. Suspicious doesn't do this crap justice, does it?"
"There's a number of options. Either this Reploid never existed, or the report was faked, or the tag for the transmission out of Giga City was. Either way, this Reploid's our only lead. You're going to have to pay South City a visit," Nana turned her chair enough to be able to look up at the imposing, former Hunter. She hoped he didn't mind doing some legwork for the benefit of her goals as well. After all, their association was a partnership. Right?
Vile pondered in silence for a few more moments, before suddenly – rather roughly – patting the back of her chair twice. "Alright, let's do this. You be my eyes and ears from here and transfer me over there," Vile almost seemed excited. Even though combat was unlikely, he still got to actually move around using a body that didn't creak and groan at the slightest motion.
"Never thought I'd see the day I'd be Vile's operator..." Nana could only sigh and mutter. In a way, she was excited, but at the same time, she had never felt more anxious. She'd never been a combat operator before. Knowing the renegade, it was unlikely the investigation was going to have her only providing intelligence all throughout. She only hoped her nerves would hold while he was under fire, as Vile was her only hope.
The renegade turned around to walk into the transfer room backwards, his arms spreading. "Never thought I'd see the day I'd have an operator," the renegade even scoffed at the end to indicate just how little faith he had in the Reploids that did her kind of work.
Nana swiveled her chair back around to double-check the safety of the coordinates she had set. After punching in a few commands, Vile vanished from sight in a stream of purple energy that shot into the sky.
"This day just keeps getting weirder and weirder," Nana ran a hand through her pink locks and prepared herself to guide her newfound partner.
"This place is a dump. Even if they put the pieces together, no way are they findin' anythin' here no more," an extremely deep and gravelly voice came from a massive Reploid standing atop one of the crumbled skyscrapers of South City. The once tropical paradise had been reduced to a bleak, brown and sandy wasteland. The impact of the colony had left nothing standing. The streets were filled with debris and the sand of the surrounding desert had covered most of the metropolis like a fine powder coating. The sun's rays barely made it through the persistently stormy sky and pervasive pollution in the air further turned the surroundings into a dreary, orange darkness. It completed the impression the city gave those who looked upon it. It was – as the giant Reploid so eloquently put – a dump.
"Boss wants to play it safe, Onslaught. This 'Nana' chick had the skills to follow tiny breadcrumbs all the way to the archives. And she got away with everything left in that vault. If she did that, finding some peculiarities isn't going to be that much of a challenge for her. Those records'll lead her, and 'el walkin' weapon', to South shitty City," a much smaller Reploid, barely reaching to the other's hips, spoke up with a high pitched voice. Fortunately, it lacked the shrieking quality of Professor Gaudile's. It resembled the vocals of an annoying child, gleefully pestering and teasing his peers. Both Reploids were draped in thick cloaks to shield them from the sand being swept up by the winds and blown through the wasteland.
The smaller of the two had mounted the larger's left shoulder, where he stretched his arms to get a kink out of his servos.
"I guess Spectrum knows best. Still can't believe he got caught off-guard like that," Onslaught snorted. "Must've been off his game."
"Neither can I, but it just goes to show even a master spy can be caught with his pants down once in a while. So, we better stay quiet and be on the look-out for any transfers. Unless we want to swallow our pride like he did."
Onslaught nodded slightly at his diminutive comrade, and backed away from the edge of the roof. "Yeah, a'ight Frostbite. Let's go."
The pair vanished into the ruins behind and below them, to take up a vantage point from where they were hard to spot, but had a good view to spot any incoming transfers.