&& Hell Followed With Her

I am all circuits and wires Gaige || New Town || Affiliated with AV

[pseudokindness]

My, wasn’t she giving him a mouthful of an infodump? Well, it seemed her level of capabilities suited Kumagawa’s interests perfectly. If purring and chirping as all they could do, well, for Kumagawa, that was actually kinda quite.

He turned his back to her, crossing his arms as he took on a cool pose.

『 Well then, Gaige-chan. Then… 』

Then he turned around, looking as excited as a five year old in a candy store. He even seemed to carry a childish blush as he started to talk.

“ Build me a robot maid girlfriend! Ah but make her kinda curvy, you know, more womanly figure than yourself. It would be great if she could swap clothes and not have them built on her, frontal zipper swimsuit is kinda the season right now, you know? 

I want her to be a perfect maid but also caring, maybe gets a little jealous if s he sees me with other girls but quickly softens up if I give her attention, right? Super cute waifu material! Like the girl from Metallic Heart, you know? “

Through his entire life, Misogi Kumagawa had been single, understandably so. Even if he had been in love, his feelings were not returned by that woman. He was an expert at never winning in anything, that reached also to his love life.

But with a customized girlfriend, surely even he could get in a relationship!

[breaksomejaws-blog]

“You want me to build you....a robot girlfriend....?”

Gaige didn’t laugh at the request, which was surprising because it caught off guard so much that she let the comment about her figure go.

That’s something she had never been asked before. Gaige had never had a boyfriend because no one wanted to date ‘the weirdo who loved robots’, and she’d never even considered building herself a boyfriend because well...her robots were like her babies! That’s not even getting into the ethical issues.

“Alright real talk, I uh, couldn’t do anything like that. Not because I lack the necessary technical skill, but one, that would require a fully functioning AI and there is a lot of ethical issues that go with forcing it to be your girlfriend, and two, I don’t have any of the materials I would need actually make the chassis and AI core.”

[breaksomejaws-blog]

ain’t no place like home -- {open}

[tuzvrukave]

“Jack.” The name comes out oddly, as if his own name was a word in some foreign language that he had only recently mastered. “My name is Jack.”

With that, Jack lowered his shotgun, resting his finger on the trigger guard. Sure, she was older and had more  shiny metal bits than a Little Sister… but the association was made nonetheless. He did, however, keep his eye on her metal(?!) arm. He knew all too well that things could go sour in a heartbeat.

None of this–from waking up (and being dead!) in the back room of an abandoned school to meeting a strange, highly-colored young woman in this strange dead town–was making sense, so Jack decided to ask the one question he was reasonably sure he would get an answer to. 

Small stuff now, big stuff… whenever.

“Why’d you throw a hammer at me?”

[breaksomejaws-blog]

He was studying her like she was some kind of alien plant. Something that if you took your eyes off of for a minute, it would leap up and devour you like you were a skag pup sniffing around.

But, this Jack person lowered his gun, his finger didn’t leave the trigger and his eyes never left her, but he wasn’t an immediate threat now. Gaige slowly lowered her left arm. Though the man couldn’t possibly know that a half-ton pile of screaming metal would come rushing at him if he tried to harm her, she didn’t want to risk him possibly taking her arm.

She needed to put on a normal, non-scared face.

“Well Jack, I heard a loud crash and I thought that something was coming to eat, kill, or kill and eat me. So, I took the best course of action and threw my hammer to scare it off.”

Actually, the best course of action would’ve been to call Deathtrap to see what was up, but she wasn’t going to mention her fit of terror.

[infinitysaber]

Faize nods; he has no reason to disagree, much can easily be accomplished by hard work–teamwork. Following suit, the eldarian made his way over to the rear of the vehicle and crouched, grasping onto a protruding edge. 

“Ready!” He announces, gaze fixated on his hands. He trained with his weapon often enough, he should have decent strength in his arms when combined with another. “On three?” he suggests, prepared to lift and move upon counting up to the moment.

[breaksomejaws-blog]

Gaige nodded in affirmation. “On three,” she assumed the most comfortable position to lift the vehicle that would give her robotic arm the maximum amount of leverage, “One...two...”

“THREE!” Straining hard, she began to lift and push the car. You’d figure that since it was charred and mostly destroyed, that it’d be easy to lift. You’d be wrong.

[iniquites]

To die will be an awfully big adventure

[iniquites]

    At Gaige’s sigh, it strikes her that she probably was just as frightened, if not more so, as Lara herself had been. Especially given that the other doesn’t seem to be armed in the slightest.                        “I thought I was the only one here as well… but I suppose it makes a certain                 kind of sense…” 

      Lowering her arm and making her way closer, she motions to their surroundings with a slightly wry expression.                        “If this is some sort of afterlife– or even just a waystation to the afterlife proper,                 it would make sense that there would be… others.”        She tries hard not to think of mortality rates, the possibility of people of even more ages, races, walks of life joining them here in this… place. It’s depressing and a bit macabre to boot, and she doesn’t want the younger girl to ask her what she’s thinking about and have to reply with that.                          “…I’m Lara. What’s your name?”

[breaksomejaws-blog]

The older woman seemed to be relaxing her weapon, which in turn caused Gaige’s back to ease up. No one likes an arrow pointed at their face. 

“If this is the afterlife, it’s waaay too creepy for my tastes. And I used to watch horror movies on the ECHOnet all the time. It also smells really bad here, like dead bodies and eggs that’ve been sitting out in the sun for too long.”

Gotta keep it light to stave off the growing pit in her stomach.

“My name’s Gaige, it’s....good to meet you? I mean it definitely would be, if you know, we hadn’t met here...in this weird purgatory...But uh, it’s nice to see another person here.”

Gaige really killed it at this whole ‘introduction’ thing.

[breaksomejaws-blog]

ain’t no place like home -- {open}

[tuzvrukave]

When the cabinet doors flew open and the canned goods spilled out onto the floor of the supermarket–creating a racket that surely could be heard for miles around–Jack resisted the urge to sigh at his own clumsiness. He did not, however, resist the urge to dodge as something flew at him seconds later–something large, heavy, with metal and wood and a bit of rubber: a hammer?

Instinct and experience overrode his curiosity. He was out on the street in seconds, shotgun ready to blow a hole in whoever had tried to brain him with a claw hammer.

The barrel of the shotgun moved, aiming for the stranger’s center mass. One quick pull and there would be the same sensations: the flash of the muzzle, the smell of gunpowder, the scream. His finger caresses the trigger–shoot, his brain says. But this isn’t what he was expecting. Where were the weeping sores, the glassy-eyed look, the hostile intent? This wasn’t a splicer–though it was odd that he’d expect to see one of them here, when he thought about it.

Jack kept the barrel pointed directly at her chest, but he locked eyes with the young woman.

“Who are you?”

[breaksomejaws-blog]

Out of the darkness of the building came an imposing man with hollow eyes. If this had been Pandora, if this had been any other time, if she had a gun or hadn’t tossed her claw hammer in a fit of terror, she would’ve already started fighting.

But it wasn’t Pandora. He had the gun, she was dead, and he was too probably. 

She brought her metal arm up, just half a motion away from summoning Deathtrap in case she needed something to stand in between the buckshot aimed at her heart. Which was ridiculous, she was dead, what did it matter?

“Gaige. Name’s Gaige.” Her voice came out a lot higher pitched than normal because she was currently scared shitless. “Who’re you?”

[bloodyhabits-deactivated2015083]

robots are neat [gaige]

Prosthetic limbs and such things were still very much in development in the current days, only just getting to the ‘robotic’ capability. And they’ve interested HABIT, as he’s seen their progress for a long time ever since the first prosthetic leg was created.

But seeing a robotic arm, read– NOT prosthetic, robotic arm only managed to interest him even further. Perhaps a bit too much.

“Hahaha, would you look at that! ‘S all mechanical and everything. Cool as hell.”

[breaksomejaws-blog]

Gaige’s cool robot arm never got this kind of attention back home! She was so happy to have people appreciate her talents as a genius robotics engineer. Maybe if her fellow ‘afterlifers’ (a new term she made up in her head), had judged her at the Science Fair, maybe she would have gotten 1st place after all.

“Made it myself, it can destroy concrete with a punch and houses a deadly robot.”

[infinitysaber]

Faize is taken a little by surprise in his exploration; having been content to keep to himself as he surveys the area, that of which he can only deem an afterlife, since retaining the knowledge of having died. 

Keeping regrets from his mind, the Eldarian focused his attentions on the other’s call for assistance and takes a look at the large vehicle blocking the path to what seems to be a store of some kind. He leans forward, as though a closer inspection would help him decipher just how to move the hunk of metal.

Bacchus would certainly be useful at this point, huh?

“I can certainly provide aid, but I must say my upper body strength isn’t the most adept for this. Still it won’t hurt to try; it looks as though one of the wheels is still operational.” Just barely, he might add. “Perhaps if we focus on lifting one side, we can use that to our advantage and make moving the vehicle easier.” 

[breaksomejaws-blog]

She snorted at his comment, “I have the arms of sad, wimpy noodles, but with enough grease I think we get this junk out of the way.”

Gaige sauntered over towards the rear left of the car in preparation of moving it, “If we can move it at least a six inches, I could squeeze in there, but a foot of space would be preferable.” She would be depending solely on her robotic limb for this, and hoped to the heavens that she wouldn’t overextend it. “Ready when you are!”

[pseudokindness]

With both his hands in his pocket, he kicked some debris off to the side. Things certainly seemed awful, but not hopeless. Gotta look at every bright side given to you if you wanna smile through things.  『 If this was my own hell there would be no girls at all. Your voice and those two things on your torso confirms this isn’t the worst possible situation. 』 

He pondered over the use of his newly acquired acquaintance. His voice was filling up with a bit of curiosity in it.

“ So tell me, Gaige-chan. How advanced can you make your robots? Sentient? Self-aware? Making decisions on their own? “

[breaksomejaws-blog]

Honestly, answering questions about robots never tired Gaige. She practically lived for it! 

“That is an excellent question my friend. Most of my prototypes were a type of worker bots that helped my dad with his work or did my chores for me, with a pretty simple AI that could function within the perimeters I gave it on its own. It did take some time to get the AI to work right without any problems.”

Like that time CH0R3B0T4 nearly set the house on fire while taking out the trash. That got her grounded for a month.

“They aren’t...capable of speech but can make themselves understood with purrs and chirps, like a cat!” Probably one of her many favorite things about her creations.

“Self-aware AIs aren’t always the best idea, unless you have failsafes in place, and even then, those could always be overridden.” She remembered the story of Felicity with an internal shudder. “Deathtrap, the most advanced thing I’ve created, can ‘make decisions’, but only because his programming has protocols that allow him to ‘decide’ what is and isn’t a threat to me. It’s not like how you and I would decide something.”

She gestured at her robotic arm, “Deathtrap, like everything else, can purr and chirp at me because he understands human speech, but he’s not self-aware or sentient. Just...more of a big metal baby.”

[cavepineson-blog-blog]

  ▣ ✘✍ ▣        ❝ …oh. ❞ Well that was a little embarrassing, to say the least. Ford had nearly forgotten how he looked in front of a mirror, but tired was definitely one of the best adjectives to be used in reference to a guy like him. He sure felt like it, anyway.

        Pinching at the bridge of his nose, Ford only gives a defeated sigh when he realizes his ( empty ) threats aren’t really gonna get him anywhere. For now, he’ll just focus on the fact that they’re both conveniently dead and have wound up in this godforsaken town.

       ❝ Er, sorry then. I think I’m still gettin’ used to social cues or what have ya. The last thing either of us need is blood on our hands, though, so let’s call this a truce for now. ❞

[breaksomejaws-blog]

The redhead shrugged, “Don’t worry about it, where I’m from, threatnin’ murder is how some people greet each other.” Others also greeted people with a bullet in between the eyes, but it wasn’t like that mattered now.

A truce? Sure, Gaige wasn’t about to look a gift skag in it’s horrible ‘cooch mouth’ as Scooter loved to put it. “Sounds good to me. The name’s Gaige by the way.”

[breaksomejaws-blog]

infinitysaber

Looking for tools so she could work on her arm and Deathtrap was the first thing on her mind. The partially submerged hardware store would give her what she needed, if it weren’t for remnants of what appeared to be car in front of her.

She waved at a person near her, “Hey! HEY!”

“Anyway I could convince you to help me move this thing?”

[cavepineson-blog-blog]

   ▣ ✘✍ ▣        Holy Moses, she wasn’t serious about this right now, was she? Either that, or the youngster was just trying to rustle this grunkle’s jimmies, because you know, what’s better than annoying the ever-loving crap out of some other dead shmuck around here.

        ❝ Look, kid ; I’m old, but I’m not that old! And I’m doin’ just fine, with or without your help right now. ❞ Lord knows he doesn’t really need it anyway. ❝ I’m sure I could kill you and anything out here in, I dunno, 12 different ways, but murderin’ the innocent isn’t on my to-do list. ❞

[breaksomejaws-blog]

Man he was getting real worked up and threatening murder. Gaige threw her hands up defensively,

“Sorry dude, but you just look so...tired, and seeing as we’re dead and all, it’s pretty unlikely you could murder me anyways. Unless double-murder is a thing here, but I doubt it.”

[breaksomejaws-blog]

cavepineson

Gaige noticed a haggard looking old man hovering near the outside of a building.

“Hey pal, you okay? You look a little worn out. I know that the elderly needs some help sometimes, like this one time my grandma fell in the shower? And we had to look after her because she broke her hip and I’m saying like, that’s rough and you don’t want that to happen to you.”

[pseudokindness]

『 Is that so? That’s a bit disappointing. You really should look into that you know.  』

Looking at the situation. He was now in the afterlife, or so he was told. And before him was some post-apocalyptic dressed twintail with a not-as-cool-as-could-been robot arm.  This place, whatever it was, seemed to lure people in from every corner of the world.

『 So who’re you? I’m Kumagawa-senpai. I guess we’ll be neighbors for a while. 』 

[breaksomejaws-blog]

“The name is Gaige, robotics genius extraordinaire. Cool to meet ya, Kumagawa.” 

If she was going to be stuck here, it wouldn’t hurt to make friends. “Seems like it. I guess that this place wasn’t my personal hell after all, if it had been, there would be preppy girls everywhere.”

[iniquites]

To die will be an awfully big adventure

[iniquites]

      …A girl. A young one at that. Lowering her bow, Lara breathes out in relief, sharp and louder than intended. The arrow is replaced, but the bow is kept well in hand, just in case, and she raises her other, now empty, hand in greeting.                        “I don’t suppose it would do much in the way of helping either of us, would it?”       Trying hard to sound friendly and not quite as wary as she felt, Lara made a slow approach, eyes still scanning, still keeping her ears tuned to the sound of anything other than her and the girl. Stopping a few feet away, lest she make the girl nervous by getting too close, she makes a show of looking around once again.                       “You’re… alone as well?” 

      She doesn’t seem to have anyone with her, but there might be someone she’s looking for.                        “Did you get separated from anyone?”

[breaksomejaws-blog]

When the arrow was put away, Gaige’s breath exploded out of her. She hadn’t realized she had been holding it. Honestly, she had to bite back a slightly hysterical laugh; a bad habit she had when her nerves got the better of her. Why was she so scared? Was it a lack of weapons? Maybe it was the finality of it all...

“Yeah, I woke up here alone, just me, myself, and I. Actually thought I was alone here,” Gaige rubbed the back of her head with her robot arm, the cool metal comforted her, “you’re the first person I’ve met so far.” 

She gestured to the buildings, “I’ve just been trying to get an idea about what’s here. Can’t hurt can it?”

[pseudokindness]

breaksomejaws

[pseudokindness]

Seeing someone out on the street was a rare sight so far. But even rarer so was when they were a cyborg! Tickling his interest, Misogi stepped out the door of the house he found himself in to confirm his assumptions. 

『 That’s a cool arm you got, can it shoot lasers like Genos’ from One Punch Man? 』

[breaksomejaws-blog]

On Pandora, random people never complimented her awesome robot arm that she built ALL BY HERSELF AND SHE GOT 3RD PLACE FOR IT, WHEN IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN 1ST, BUT SHE WASN’T BITTER, NOT ON YOUR LIFE! 

“Never heard of that and it doesn’t, but I can create a robot with it.”

[iniquites]

To die will be an awfully big adventure

      Reason resolving itself forward, she straightens, fingers pressing tight to the wall, nails digging in, spine straightening, upright once more. The circumstances are, for the moment, ignored, in favor of a goal settling firmly in her mind. Bow unslung from her back, she takes careful count of her arrows, the notches at their bases relaying their type, and she frowns. Low, and missing some. Until she finds more, she’ll have to be careful. Making her way forward into the empty town, she walks slowly, bow held low, an arrow nocked. Slowly, she makes her way out and toward more of the buildings, keeping both eyes and ears open for the sound of anyone or anything else. A snap of something– branches, leaves– behind her, and she whirls, bow lifted and ready, arrow at the ready, finger on the lighter attached to the bow in case she needs the flames. Low and rough, her voice rings out in a demand.                          “Who’s there? Show yourselves–!”

[breaksomejaws-blog]

In a fit of anxiety, Gaige decided that’d it be a good idea to wander around in what she assumed was an abandoned, dilapidated town that was her personal hell without a weapon. 

Axton had advised her during one of his many moments of bragging about his war exploits that one time on Promethea, he got lost behind enemy lines with a broken leg and an ‘uncomfortable hunk of metal shoved up his ass’ (which turned out to be his future ex-wife’s engagement ring). In a haze of pain and worry, he was able to calm himself by focusing on one thing: for him it had been the aforementioned uncomfortable hunk of metal in his ass, but it helped him shake off the terror of being lost in enemy territory.

That was a story Gaige could’ve gone the rest of her life without hearing honestly, but she took his advice. She only concentrated on her breathing, quietly creeping around town like a ghost, because technically, she was now. She was almost through a thicket of trees and almost had a heart attack. A woman! Gaige nearly shouted out in relief, but decided against it, opting to approach before scaring someone out of their skin.

Then she stepped on a branch, and the woman whirled around, arrow notched and pointed directly in Gaige’s direction. Gaige could call Deathtrap but, if she could get some answers or help instead of blindly murdering, that would be swell. The girl cautiously stepped out of the trees with her hands raised slightly

"Uh, don't kill me please. Well, uh I mean, kill me twice? Since we're dead?"

[breaksomejaws-blog]

Hey hey hey, like this post if you want the tiniest starter you can imagine. no cap!