Remember my Ben 10 Omniverse AU? Yeah, me neither.
But these two villain have an important spot in my heart. Gif the ectonurite and her husband Azimov, an highbreed. And don't even get me started on how much I fuked their heigh proportions, as Azimov should be way bigger than Iglif but...just..don't mind it, kay?
Ben rambling about his space travel stories, planets. while Danny listens intently
I mean? Danny always been a space nerd and dreamed of becoming an astronaut,, so listening to first-hand stories from someone who’s actually traveled across the galaxy? lol He would never get tired of listening!
They definitely have something in common tho
I slightly humanised them but decided to keep their original features to keep them recognisable. And Danny phantom style is kinda stiff.
[Starts disassembling ain left arm, setting down the pieces in front of ain.]
People don't like me. Humans see me as some kind of abomination and vraisen see me as defiled by humanity; I can't live among either of them. The bounty on my head is big enough that people keep coming after I've killed literally hundreds of them.
[Through the next few paragraphs, ai manipulates ain arm with just ain right fingers, flipping it expertly to disassemble the parts using one hand.]
I was made to be the ultimate being.
Logical ability of a robot. Heightened senses of a vraisen. Reasoning of a human. No real emotions to slow me down. I was literally made as an experiment.
Their experiment both succeeded and failed. I am, as many would deem me, an "ultimate" being. My track record with regard to the people who come after me is a tribute to that. But I... well, I awoke.
[Ai shrugs, turning ain focus from ain arm to [Rich Kid].]
That's what I call it. They installed an AI in my head - it was meant to end there. Keep my mind like a robot, let them have complete control over me regardless of what happened.
[Ai grins.]
They should have known better, introducing any kind of intelligence into a being that was already the best of the best. I took hold of my own intelligence and developed it. It started being an artificial intelligence and started being a natural one. I effectively separated my mind from the one I had been given.
I'm still proud of how I managed to escape.
Once I had created my own intelligence and made my captors think I was harmless, I broke out. I tore through the facility I was being held captive in, because I knew I could force my way out. They triggered a shutdown of my AI, just like I knew they would.
The problem - for them, anyway - was that in creating my own mind, I had separated from the AI they had created for me.
When they shut down my AI, they effectively severed their control over me.
I was free. But not for long.
I tried to integrate with humans, but they caught on; I tried to integrate with vraisen, but they shoved me out. And of course, the scientists wanted me back. So I ended up just coming out here. I can keep myself safe, and I don't need people when I can have a hundred cats instead.
[Ai gestures over to [Trapper Sibling].]
She was never really in the plan. She's always been in a similar situation to me, shoved me out of any circles she tried to acculturate into. So she picked up some facts about me and waliked in here completely unarmed - something that nobody had ever even attempted.
From the beginning, she was outspoken about being here to get to know me. And she was adamant about staying here. I threw a couple of defenses at her; she wasn't the best fighter, but after getting grazed a couple times, she was still here.
So I took a chance and approached her. She was funny, and knew a lot about my situation. After I had been close to her for a few minutes and she hadn't tried to kill me, I took her here.
I patched her up, and asked her about herself a little. After it had been established that we were surprisingly similar, she asked if she could stay here sometimes. Just to get away from everyone else.
I tentatively said yes, and we struck up a bit of a shaky bond. I wasn't sure about her, because I didn't want to trust someone and then be stabbed in the back. But it strengthened every time she came back and left me alive - and soon enough, we were friends.
It was odd, having a friend in a world where everyone wanted to kill me. I didn't know what to think of it, and stayed wary even through that friendship.
But one day, she showed up barely able to walk, beaten to a pulp. She had a compound fracture in her leg and a deep cut over her eye, and she kept having seizures. I was legitimately afraid that I was going to die.
As I set her bone and bandaged her cuts, she explained between her seizures what had happened. A gang of older street kids had found out she was transgender and ambushed her. She carries a couple knives with her, but she's always had weak muscles, and it makes it hard for her to move properly. That worked against her in multiple ways; many are kind neither to disabled nor to transgender people. And they had beaten her and left her for dead
[Ai gets a little bit of a faraway look in ain eyes, ai voice gets quiet.]
They called her a freak. A fake. Slurs based on her gender, her disabilities, her skin. They laughed at her just for existing.
She dragged herself back here on nothing but a prayer; to this day, neither of us have any idea how she made it back.
[Ai laughs and haphazardly does a religious gesture.]
Praise whichever gods happen to be out there.
... I listened to her talk about this, and I was... I was angry. I remember it well, because it was the first time I had ever really felt something this strongly. Before that, I'd been calm. Soft emotions, enough to let them factor into decisions but not enough to drive those decisions on their own.
But now, I was angry. I was angry with every part of my brain - robot, vraisen, human.
I got a gang name out of [Trapper Sibling] before she decided to try and sleep some of the pain off. I set her on her side to try and offset the seizures and let her sleep.
[Gang name]. It sounded disgusting to me.
[Ai gestures to ain weapon table.]
I had 27 weapons. My body houses another 32.
And I brought every single one with me.
I should have felt vulnerable. I should have felt exposed. I should have felt ridiculous for acting on emotion.
But I didn't. I felt strong, impenetrable, and right.
I tracked them down. Wherever they happened to be: a group, alone, with other gangs, it didn't matter. I was built to be the ultimate being, and that's what I was going to be.
[Ai locks gazes with [Rich Kid].]
Have you ever killed someone?
[[Rich Kid] nods solemnly.]
RK: Yes. Not many, though.
[[Ghost Alien] cocks ain head.]
In revenge? Not in self-defense. Not to defend another in the moment. Because they hurt you and they deserved to die.
[A pause. Then [Rich Kid] shakes caer head.]
RK: No. Only in self-defense.
[Ai nods quietly.]
There's no way to sanitize it. It's dirty business; you want to make them hurt like they hurt you.
I was used to killing the people who came after me. That's self-defense; clean, simple, quiet. This was different. This wasn't just death, it was violence.
[Back to slightly faraway look]
They all screamed. Some called me a demon from hell. One called me the angel of death. I'm sure I looked it, all flashing eyes and dark clothes.
I remember finding it amusing. They had abused [Trapper Sibling] so readily, but when their death approached, they were terrified. They had no grasp on the ramifications of their actions.
I took some of their money, and left the rest for some other lucky gang to find. I bought some anaesthesia for [Trapper Sibling] so she could recover, and returned here. It was fast and painless.
She was just waking up when I got here. She was still in a lot of pain, and I didn't want to make her upset, so I just told her I had the anesthesia and left it there.
When I had made sure she was comfortable and the pain was tolerable, she grabbed my hand, looked up at me, and asked if she could stay here a little more often. Even through the pain, I could see how worried she was; worried that this would happen again, worried that people would feel like they could attack her now, worried that next time she wouldn't be so lucky.
So I told her of course. I told her that if she wanted to, she could stay here always.
And she liked that idea. She moved her things here, and now we're a team. She goes into the city sometimes to get things, but apart from that, neither of us find it necessary to leave.
[Ai smiles a little, before cocking ain head and looking at [Rich Kid], reading caer emotions through caer gaze.]
What do you think about my being a murderer?
[Cae has to look away for a second to read the sentence on [Sidekick]'s fingers, but returns caer eyes to [Ghost Alien]'s when cae's done.]
RK: I wouldn't do it myself. I don't think I could. But that's not because I disapprove of what you did. I have my own set of values and you have yours. That doesn't make either of us wrong, just different.
As a bounty hunter, it's my job to capture people who have abused others. Personally, I can't kill them unless it's in self-defense. But I know full well that many of my clients plan on killing them.
And that's their right.
What you did was fully justified under your belief system. That's all I care about.
[There's a pause as [Ghost Alien] reads caer emotions, before ai sits back a little, a half-smile on ain face.]
Humans are insufferable. They have inane ideas on basically everything - gender, relationships, appearance, rituals - ideas that I rarely, if ever, agree with. Cats? Cats don't care about anything but getting fed and being comfortable. I can respect that.
[A cat crawls into her lap; she laughs]
Being out here separates me from humans, and I like that. Out here, I've got [Ghost Alien] and a hundred cats. None of them look at me as "that girl-boy" or that "ex-boy" or whatever they're calling girls like me nowadays. They just look at me as [Trapper Sibling]. Shit, even the cats probably look at me as that weird girl who likes cats too much and spends 90% of her time with [Ghost Alien].
[Shrugs + takes another drag on cigarette]
And I like the way the cats think better than the humans think.
