The squandering of progress is likely the only true motivation that lurked within the research that led to Dolly’s creation. Reliance on such primitive technologies was something of a sore spot for those who were truly the most prominent thinkers of the time, and nowhere was that more apparent than when Dolly was coasting above Cyclone City.
The chaos and fear were like a shot of unadulterated life directly into the veins. The grid. A blanket of life beneath her wings, healing the soul even as her flesh was frayed and her core sputtering.
Dolly was enormous compared to her former self. Still as lanky and unusual and sleek, but taller with a wingspan that eclipsed the moon. Though Dolly was not interested in striking fear into the hearts of other Mirians. No, she had a much more important task at hand.
For what Dr. Uket had said about her was true. She was wicked, and only wished to see the devastation that beautiful weapons could bestow upon the lawful landscape. Cyclone City was a breeding ground for experimentation. All it needed was someone who was willing to perform such dangerous actions.
The artificial could be rebuilt.
Dolly gripped onto the Midnight Riot, the heftiness of it eager to find purchase in blood and gore of the enemy. It was clear who that was. Mirians like her - yet so unlike her - who needed to be tested. Pushed to the limit of the Prototype-C.
The Midnight Riot seemed to hum with intent. All Dolly needed to do was get close enough. All she craved was to suck the life out of them and bash the cases and disrupt the ones and zeros that assaulted her every sense. Even the threats.
The grid called to her as well. Bountiful nectar to be utilized and honed and sharpened until it lanced out of her and into the unwilling recipient. The long cord of Dolly’s tail curled indignantly, forcing her to veer off course. So lost in the thoughts of dedication that she almost let the purple baton slip from her grasp.
A brief expulsion of electrical energy burst from the coils of her wool as she screeched and gripped tighter to the thing-that-replaced-the-C.R.A.B.-Cannon. The precious artifact that opened the floodgates of wonton destruction.
And as Dolly approached the walls of Cyclone City, she grew excited. It was just like hunting in the north. She was awkward with her flaps as she drew in the drafty up-currents, but she knew what she wanted. The flashing of light and the staggering effects of pathisms both powerful and subtle careened through the air, a cascade of desperation from the citizens of Cyclone City.
She was ready, channeling her own electropathy through the prongs in her tail as all her crimson red tubing glowed under the effects of her pathism. The blade of the Midnight Riot flared to life, breathing violence through nostrils microscopic in size, a chilling Tuscany yellow. Brash against the dark blacks and purples of the baton itself.
In a swift motion, Dolly rocketed upwards, carrying the wind with her as she swirled around and gripped the Midnight Riot even tighter, slamming all her momentum into the back of a Prototype-C, a massive discharge of electricity following soon after, shielded only by the clouds of dust and debris that twisted into the air and over the cliff of the wall face.
She was a storm incarnated, and even though other Mirians could have gotten hurt, she did not care for that. So long as the Midnight Riot would allow her to, she would savagely swing it, leap into the air and swing it again. It was so much more brutal than the clean plasma beams of the C.R.A.B. Cannon.
The Midnight Riot was a battering ram, amped up by Dolly’s pathism leeching from her core into the starfall blade. Even when she could no longer sustain the constant stream of current, Dolly was swinging the Midnight Riot around to claim as many of her competition as possible. Mighty ones and zeros made corporeal. She hated every single one of them.
Their binaries and her binaries clashed in an invisible war, just as much as the scattered debris of a broken wall bounced off their metal casings. The clash of ideas, a cybernetic attack. Though Dolly had the advantage of being able to slap with her wings and jab her prongs into them as well, even until she was barely glinting under the moon. The blood of the city was hers and hers alone, and she would be the only one who could feed off of it.
The Prototype-Cs were enemies. Horrible drones, pressured into a hivemind that was attempting to starve the city of its blood. Dolly’s blood. For even though Dolly was organic and inorganic, she was still an individual. An individual that would protect her food supply by any means necessary.
The grid was hers. Cyclone City was hers.
The Prototype-Cs were numerous. As soon as one went down, another took its place, labeled only by number, 4439. Dolly snarled, electricity dancing between her fangs, and she landed heavily and grabbed the Midnight Riot like a bat. Was this the final one? The final obstacle?
She flared her fleshy pronged nose and hissed savagely as she swung again. In her eyes, 4439 did not stand a chance against her. The cracking of metal against metal sent a shower of sparks as the starfall of the Midnight Riot sputtered out again, leaving Dolly with only a hulking sledgehammer of a weapon. One she happily bashed with, screaming in ones and zeroes to her enemies.
It took several hours of passive charging for Dolly to come back to her senses. In the darkness, half-conscious and half offline, there were strings of current that danced across what little vision she had. Like flickers of light that pulsed and alternated faster than any organic brain could comprehend.
It was buzzing. High-pitched and constant. But buzzing nevertheless, and once her core had regained enough power, Dolly flickered awake. She was covered in fine dust and pebbles, buried halfway into a melted wall. The C.R.A.B. Cannon was still strapped to her arm, but it was clearly damaged. Smoke billowed out from the opening and Dolly’s arm was tingling, burned by the excessive energy.
The atrium of the Central Hub was in shambles, parts of steamrunners littered the floor and it was slick with hydraulic fluid. Dolly groaned as her organic parts begged her to stay still. There was a lot of pain, but ultimately, she was supposed to be firing the C.R.A.B. Cannon and she was failing to do so.
As she excised herself from the melted wall, Dolly was scanning the atrium for Dr. Uket. He had given her the instructions in the first place and yet, he was nowhere to be found. Eok and Norasmas were gone, as was Noia. Perhaps they had gone deeper. It was safer within the heart of Central Hub anyway.
Dolly’s senses were assaulted by the streams of ones and zeroes again. Commands from another place, though they were easily fended off by the Polar brain that floated within her capsule headcase. No, she would not be listening to the commands of HER. Whoever that was.
She skated across the floor, careful to keep her balance as she toed around the broken machines. There was an equally ferocious empathetic response. These poor machines. Hijacked and made dangerous. The other Mirians out there in the rest of the city. And, as unempathetic. Failures. The whole lot of them. If they could not serve, then they deserved to be broken down and remade.
The whole place was dark still. Even the emergency lights had gone dim and Dolly made her way down the stairs to the observation bay of her birth. She would wait for Dr. Uket down there. Surely, he would return for his tools.
Dolly didn’t like the idea of being a tool…
Deep within the depths of Central Hub, the emergency lights were sparsely scattered and most were just as dim as upstairs, though there were a variety of other malevolent glowing lights. Reds and blues splashed across the walls, that grew dim before flaring up. Mesmerizing and dangerous.
Dolly pushed open the door to the observation wing with the tip of the C.R.A.B. Cannon, tearing through the door with ease. It squeaked and wrinkled before her and the colored flashing lights suddenly brightened, alerting others to the presence of an intruder. Dolly was unconcerned and pushed onward, her organic mind throbbing with the effort to ward away the instructions to join them.
“Them” meant nothing to her. She didn’t even want to be here. She had little control over her own actions to start with and even though her mind was divided into the flesh and the silicon, she was clinging to something. Individuality. Life?
Dolly entered another room and was nearly ripped apart by Sebras taller and stronger than she was. Giant titans of artificial creation. The perfected Prototype-C. And leading them was a being even more intimidating.
Dr. Uket lay on the floor, bound by thick cable, his mouth taped shut. He looked hurt, blood pooling underneath him, but he was still alive. Dolly could sense the natural electrical signals coming from his unmoving body.
The Prototype-Cs grabbed her, crushing the C.R.A.B. Cannon even more around her arm. Dolly winced, and part of her even screamed, but it was snuffed out by the artificial code before it could even leave her throat.
Fire the C.R.A.B. Cannon.
“Pathetic lesser lifeform.”
Dolly was only acutely aware that this being was referring to her. Dolly blinked, her core pulsing dangerously as she reached for her pathism. It remained weakened for now, but the Prototype-Cs were ripe with electrical energy themselves. More than Dr. Uket, but less than the grid, which still called to her.
“Who are you?” Dolly asked.
“Sebra.AI.”
The instant transmission of that energy nearly swept Dolly off her feet. The mere act of thinking pained her in the presence of such a threat. Sebra.AI piloted around a body that was dangerous in every sense of the word. From the jagged spines along the tail to the crystalline core and wing-like protrusions. Sebra.AI was nothing like any Sebra Dolly had ever seen in this life or whatever carnal memories the flesh still had.
The intense feeling of assimilation requests was flowing over her in droves. Waves crashing on her warded away only by the brain, which was fatigued and ready to give up already.
“I will not bow to you, Sebra.AI,” Dolly said. “You are made of ones and zeroes. Easily disruptable. I will fire the C.R.A.B. Cannon now.”
The whirring of the broken device was almost cut off by the Prototype-C that had grabbed her. Dolly squirmed as she clenched her fist and a beam of plasma spilled out in a messy sputter, spraying the condensed light in a fan rather than a true beam.
She fled, but not far. There would be no way that her physical limitations would allow her to escape so easily. She had to fire her way out, though she lacked the energy. As the Prototype-Cs attacked, Dolly ran as fast as she could to another part of the observation bay, the assimilation requests changing to threats of destruction.
The C.R.A.B. Cannon was no longer going to serve her as she needed. It had maybe one or two good shots left in it before it would explode, likely taking her whole arm with it. She’d need to grab something else, and there were tons of weapons in the works. Things that would be fun to flail around.
The bricks of the walls rained down upon her as she fled from the Prototype-Cs and Sebra.AI. Dolly crashed through another set of doors into a room that was dimly lit and house a wall of glass displays. She had no time to think about it, however, as she rushed to the first one that caught her interest. A long purple rod with dense spikes lining the length of it.
This would do.
Dolly pointed the C.R.A.B. Cannon up at the ceiling and blasted a deep hole into the ceiling. Much like in the atrium, it made a mess, but not a melted tunnel. More debris rained down upon her, shattering the glass around her newly chosen weapon.
The C.R.A.B. Cannon sputtered out and Dolly tried to pull the thing off in vain. Her pursuers had finally caught up with her, however, and she had to think fast if she was going to get out of there in one piece. If only she could…
That’s when an idea popped into her think-flesh. The desire to funnel the electrical currents around her into herself was still as strong. Like sucking the lifeforce out of the inorganic things around her. As soon as the Prototype-Cs bashed through the wall, Dolly was upon them, shrieking as her organic parts forced themselves to change.
Her arms bled as wings broke through the skin and reattached to the tubing that lined her body. Her wool grew denser and longer, crackling with her pathism as it escaped confinement. The delicate green morphed into a bright crimson as Dolly lost the control she had over her beastly desires. The Prototype-Cs had electricity, and she needed it.
She dug her fangs between their plates, opening the circuit between them and she allowed the unfettered flow of electrical energy to course through her. Her tail also crackled with her pathism and she hooked the prongs into the C.R.A.B. Cannon, just as she had before. Though this time, she wouldn’t worry about leaving the circuit open. It wasn’t her energy she was using.
For the final time, the C.R.A.B. Cannon exploded with energy and Dolly pointed it upwards, allowing the beam to go until it exploded. Her arm was torn apart, cables splaying out like ribbons, though her flesh was just burned and scarred.
She lurched away from the drained Prototype-C, kicking with her newly clawed feet as she took flight. She zapped the remaining Prototype-C as she passed, grasping at the new weapon with her other foot and taking to the skies. She zoomed up the newly melted tunnel as glass, burning paper, and melted drops of steel cascaded from the gaping wound in the Central Hub.
She was free. Wild. Hungry, and chaotic.
And she was rearing to get a good look at the weapon she had stolen. Her connection to it forged in an instant, stealing her pathism and solidifying its identity with her. The Midnight Riot. It was heavier than the C.R.A.B. Cannon, but Dolly would worry about that later.
For now, the walls around cyclone City were under attack, and Dolly wasn’t going to waste time. She was going to riot. As much as her flesh would let her.
