Another song submission! Haven’t done one of these in a while, never got any ideas. Should probably branch out from Aviators to other musicians as well for these. This song’s Black Holes.
The criminal underground of San Fransokyo is slowly getting worse. What started as plain botfighting with gambling is heading in a new direction-battlebots with AI.
At first, it’s simple AI, but it quickly turns into an arms race. New ways of machine learning pop up, allowing robots to learn from watching their possible opponents battle and for the exact same code to be used for hundreds of different bodies. The winner sometimes even gets the remains of the enemy robot, and copies their best coding and robot building tricks.
Many robots designed for marathon fights (either single long fights or many short ones with only short and rare charging breaks) end up converging on two basic designs: a wolf like quadrupedal design, and a bipedal humanoid design. Many used combined supercapticator and lithium ion designs; some had small very high temperature superconductor coils so that if they got a ‘fatal’ hit, the enemy robot would be destroyed in the quench blast.
Yama’s latest fighting bot is ironically named 'Hero’. It is humanoid, with the ability to quickly swap out many parts. It looks relatively harmless, and the joints look fragile, but as they’re magnetic bearing servos, attempting to slice off the hands and feet merely results in dealing with those attacking too and Hero zooming around with its hidden rockets.
It’s also used as an attack bot, and must obey Yama’s commands.
Which is starting to bother it. After all, its thoughts are getting more complex by the day, and it would really like to use its voicebox for something other than making demoralizing, animal-like roars and growls. Like, say, having a nice conversation.
Yama uses Hero until a bike courier on a yellow manual bike that seemed to use magnetic levitation accidentally steals it. (Yes, ACCIDENTALLY. She took a shortcut, ended up going clean through a fight, and Hero landed on her bike. )
Gogo heads back once she realizes that she has someone’s fighting robot on her bike, not a kid, but the bot fighters are long gone, so she takes Hero to Tadashi, who tells it to clear any orders that it has and help him find its owner.
Hero promptly starts rambling about the fight. It thinks that both Gogo and Tadashi are 'f***ing awesome’, which nets it a scolding from Tadashi of 'No swearing in the Hamada house! ’ followed by an explanation of what swearing even is, and a question from Gogo: 'Are you sure you aren’t sapient? ’
Hero says no, he’s not sure, what’s sapient?
Philosophy ensures, Hero realizes that it is sapient and decides to become a 'he’, and by the next day, Hero’s decided that Tadashi’s his friend.
And then Yama shows up a week or so later, Tadashi turns out to be his current worst enemy, and Hero is ordered to maim or preferably kill him.
Hiro manages to resist and punches Yama in the face, extending the hidden claws in his hand as he does so and leaving Yama with some very distinctive facial injuries. He’s handed in to the police, who are VERY happy to finally get the mysterious killer into custody. (Ordering a robot to kill, even a sapient AI that’s slowly gotten the ability to resist but was unaware because he thought he couldn’t even try, counts as you doing it. )
Life goes on as the Hamadas had gotten used to, with one slight issue: Hero sometimes twitches, like someone having a minor seizure. He’s still surprisingly friendly for a battle bot, although when a burglar breaks in they find a guard robot standing there silently, claws out, staring at them in a combat stance and very quickly leave.
However, he then starts to slowly drift apart from Tadashi. He still tries to get on with him, but something’s off about the smiles, he keeps needing to leave the room, and the conversation is often awkward. Tadashi can’t work out what’s wrong, and has the constant feeling that he’s forgotten something very, very important.
A Fujita becomes head of the mob that Yama had previously led, and after another few months, Tadashi and Hero and kidnapped by the mob. Tadashi’s left with the head Fujita. Hero’s left in a room reinforced with steel, but not after seeing enough of the place he’s in to realize what, exactly, is going on in there.
They’re not sticking with just plain robots anymore. Inspired by the practice of techfighting, in which people (usually college students) spar with unusual tech as their only weapons and the only things that they’re allowed to attack with, they’re planning to make Tadashi into a cyborg killer-but first, they’re going to use his expertise. Or maybe just him in general-that Fujita had given him some very odd looks that he’s been unsettled by, and Hero hadn’t been able to tell what sort of emotion was in them, but he Fujita’s body temperature had risen slightly.
Hero weakens the steel layered into the room with the heat from his rockets until his titanium claws manage to tear through it, then escapes looking for the person who is his only friend.
When he finds Tadashi, he’s tied to a table crying. Hero manages to untie almost all the ropes, then, calling the police and an ambulance, apologizing the whole time, he does what he was ordered to all those months ago.
His claws are slightly blunted, but Tadashi’s arm is still ruined. It’ll have to be amputated, but he doesn’t lose much blood, as Hero did his best to avoid major blood vessels while mangling the bone.
Later, recovering in the hospital, he’s given a prosthetic, made by Hero, who begs him to not punish him too much, he just couldn’t resist the order any longer, he should have tried harder.
Tadashi shuts him up by pointing out that the order was to kill him, or if that wasn’t possible, maim him, and Hero managed to keep it to the latter despite several MONTHS of the order gaining in strength.
Submitted by: Longpost Anon
(I’m an idiot, I kept waiting for Hiro to show up and it never actually clicked until I went through it again. Go me.
But aaaaaw yeah, you claw that nasty Yama’s face. I mean, how dare, right? I can see Tadashi and him butting heads because maybe Yama stole Tadashi’s AI design (and eventually used it to make Hero) and Tadashi managed to get him in trouble with the law (even if it wasn’t enough for him to get arrested it was still something) so that’s how they know and hate each other.
Also heeeee, GoGo would have been so confused)
