Signal Noise: Legacy of Napyarn

[Serak]

[OBJECTIVES CONFIRMED. SUBJECT-64 LOCATED. POWER GREATER THAN ANTICIPATED. APPREHENSION WILL REQUIRE EXCEEDING SAFETY LIMITS.]

“Approved,” a voice, across the stars, spoke into an unseen microphone. It sounded deep, but scratchy with age. “Keep her alive long enough to access the facility and strip all the data on her. Find out what happened to Napyarn.”

[PARAMETERS CONFIRMED. PROCEEDING.]

High upon a flat-topped residential building, not quite a sky-scraper and not quite a short apartment block, stood a figure roughly the height of the average Human male. Primarily a body of grey armor and white metal underneath, all trimmed in gold. Robotic, clearly, though finely made, with dark eyes like a Saiyan and long, white hair that stretched down to the back. A sleek model, the exterior shining and free of the slightest blemish. The face indistinguishable from Humans, Saiyans, Konatsians except for the lack of long ears, and many of the other races of the universe.

Carved into its grey ‘breastplate,’ if it could be called that, a designation: G-01.

Complete with a red cloak that hung from around its neck as it stood and stared down at the figure of a pale, one-horned woman wearing a form-fitting black dress. Were it not for the skin tone and the horn, she looked Human. However, G-01’s data told him the truth of her.

A creation of genetic engineering from Dr. Avondall Napyarn, a colleague of his master’s – and now missing.

He wasted no further time. Steam began to rose from his elbows, knees, and other joints. His head twitched as internal heat growth exceeded warning parameters. He vanished with a rush of air from atop the building and left cracks in the rooftop where he had stood before. The world bent and blurred around him as exceptional movement efficiency, and rapidly growing power, translated into sheer velocity.

Crack!

Index and middle finger pierced not through the flesh of 64, but instead the wall of the building she walked past upon one of the endless-city’s sidewalks. Thick cracks spread up the wall like branches of a tree. As G-01’s boots gently touched on the concrete beneath him and his target, who reacted with an uncanny precision to avoid that first strike, his eyes slowly turned to her as if time itself moved more slowly.

They locked gazes for a moment, until tiny spheres of white Ki no larger than a half-fist appeared all around his body. He pulled his fingers from the concrete wall, and their glowed a crackling green.

A moment later and the dozens of spheres rushed forward, scatter-shot, and began to explode against everything they touched. Heat washed over the street and the countless other civilians – Changelings, Humans, Saiyans, even a Namekian! – all screamed and began to flee.

G-01 did not flee, G-01 charged into the fray as 64 answered the sudden, wordless assault, dealt with the rush of destructive energy-orbs headed her way, he added to the chaos with sharp kicks and elbows to cut off her every avenue of escape.

 

[Failure-64]

I wonder if that Human vendor will be out today, 64 though as she weaved through the streets, eyes glazed over and uncaring of the world around her. Those sugar-crusted snacks were delectable. What did he call them? Churr--

The hiss similar to that of a steam engine. Before she even registered it as odd, she moved. Black hair whipped to the side as she pivoted, twisted on her heel and watched as the glint of metal pierced into the building beside her. Her first reaction was that it had been some sort of primitive throwing weapon, but as the cracks spider-webbed up the side of the building she realized it was a very different sort of weapon.

Fucking clanker.

Its stare, neutral and completely emotionless, met hers for that moment. It saw how her eyes flashed and began to glow, flickering not with fear, but irritation. She was more inconvenience by this than worried about why some Android was jumping her in the middle of the street.

Bolts of pink-red Ki erupted from her open palm, wild and untamed for only the split second of their creation. Then, with a whip-like crack, it condensed around her fist and up her forearm, taking the shape of a brightly colored gauntlet.

Just as her hair had began to settle against her back, she twisted forward. Just as it was resetting after its miss, she ducked low, threw her fist forward, and felt her knuckles--

--graze against a metal surface that had suddenly vanished. Where once stood that bucket of bolts, a storm of red lightning erupted from 64's fists, ripping the building and ground asunder with violent lashes.

Then, it was her turn to be caught wide open.

An explosion of Ki that, quite honestly, was far too excessive for her liking, tore the ground asunder, flinging debris and large chunks of concrete into the air. Dust billowed into the air, only to be immediately blown away by the whistling of fists and feet clashing against each other. Black marks burned against 64's arms, proof that it had ultimately gotten the first hit. However, with them now both aware of each other, it was a much even fight.

They traded successful blows, most onto 64; it moved so effortlessly and without tell, as if a machine could have "instincts" that guided it into unpredictable locations.

64 hissed, irritated, as she narrowly avoided his fist from being introduced to her temple.

"Fuck on back to whatever back alley, used parts shop you came from!"

Another strike against her chest, then grazed along her arm as she twisted out of the way. Her own fist met an iron wall that served as the Android's lower stomach, unyielding and unaffected by the recoil that would come from a truly living being. For every hit she landed, it landed two. Until, right as the Android's fist pulled back from a recent jab into her gut, 64's eyes flashed and Ki crackled around her fist. That fist lurched forward, whistled in the air as it passed by its chest yet aga--

--Her other fist cracked against the side of its head. The Ki around her fists shivered, electric and cackling, before shooting straight into its body.

 

[Serak]

[SCATTER BURST SUCCESSFUL.]

Burns layered across 64’s arms and front, putting small holes in a now-smoldering dress. She backed away and G-01 pursued through the smoke and lingering explosions. An elbow followed, avoided, and then the introduction of his lower leg right into her ribs.

That slammed her into the wall, cracked and collapsed it, but she didn’t fall in. Instead, as if she had not simply been attacked for no discernable reason, she leaped right back into the fray. Around them, the panicked screams continued. Emergency sirens began to blare throughout the district as word of the altercation spread fast.

Then, a light cast itself across G-01’s expressionless face.

Ancient armor made of 64’s red-pink energy constructed itself around both of her arms. She struck with it, grazed against the side of G-01’s head, and then it vanished. Combat routines and the electro-mechanical equivalent of neurons, firing trillions of times per second instead of dozens, fired, and he moved through the air like a whistle.

Blows traded back and forth. Each time, the heaviest of blows from 64 sent plasma-like tendrils of energy whipping out into the environment. Floating streetlights exploded. The energy carved through the front walls of the buildings around them. Strays sailed up into the air and destroyed flying vehicles, sending them crashing down as a fiery disaster upon the world below.

She spoke.

[TARGET’S ENERGY UNCONTROLLED. WORDS BETRAY UNCERTAINTY. ENGAGE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUBROUTINES.]

G-01 caught one of her energy-gauntleted wrists in one of his hands and squeezed. Normal steel would have bent and groaned under his grip.

Those black eyes stared into her crimson.

[DETAILS UNNECESSARY. EXTRAPROLATE. REACTION WILL BE INFORMATIVE.]

“Did you think you could get away with it, Failure-64?” He spoke in a voice entirely normal, organic, downright Human.

“Did you believe Napyarn had no failsafes? No insurance policies?”

[INCOMING.]

A blow from her other fist, suddenly faster than all the rest, struck the side of his head – right in his temple, clean. He felt something under his synthetic skin break and, for a moment, the black irises and pupils vanished from his eyes. A split-second later and there was a flash of 64’s red-pink light out the other side of his head, like a mist as something penetrated through his artificial body.

[INTERNAL DISRUPTION ATTEMPTED. …]

He stumbled, twice, towards the street.

[…]

Caught standing on just one foot, he listed to the side.

[COUNTERACTED.]

His weight shifted and he reeled back his leg and kicked it forward with the boom of ancient cannon fire from the sudden snap of his knee caps. His joints, still steaming, cracked and sparkled as the blow caught the woman in the gut and crashed her through one of the residential buildings they fought next and continually shook and damaged with each strike.

He heard her crash through another faster that.

Another bent had sparks crackle and snap in his knees. Energy rushed through him and he lifted off the ground and flew through the building – plumbing, electrical, concrete, support beams, all mangled and destroyed – and after her. His eyes gave him vision beyond what any normal organ could do: heat vision, liquid awareness, automatic interior mapping, all in addition to scanning for life energy.

He saw her the entire time, even when she would have been obscured from normal eyes.

As the first building began to collapse, he exited out the back and went into the next on the opposite end of the city block. This one, 64 did not crash straight through. Instead, he located her power within the dust, the debris, somewhere on the first floor of the building.

[RE-DEPLOYING SCATTER BURST]

More of those all-white orbs appeared around him and exploded outwards. Some crashed around the exterior hole in the back of the building. Most went in exploded somewhere in the center of it, sending beams of white out the windows before the interior blast destroyed the entire building.

Rubble and debris crashed into the city around. More took out vehicles in the air above, the blast wave itself nearly collapsed the neighboring buildings to G-01’s right and left. In the place of what had once been a home to countless, of a myriad of spaces, a cloud of black – glowing orange inside – appeared instead.

G-01’s sensors already told him what his eyes alone could not: She escaped. Out the front, before the explosion, into the air.

An aura of all-white appeared around his mechanical body as he raced through the air, outpaced her, and suddenly came to a stop before her. Eyes locked onto hers, and her momentum too great to stop.

Just what he wanted.

[DATA SPIKE ACTIVATED.]

He struck forward with two more fingers, glowing a faint green, and she barely twisted to the side – only for his boot to connect with her chin and send her hurtling upwards, through the clouds above the moon-wide city.

 

[Failure-64]

Her vision blurred, head spun, for what felt like a deadly amount of time. Yet, she righted herself before the Android could chase after. A burst of red-pink Ki caught her, flaring up around her limbs. Without the chill of the wind whipping against her, she could feel warmth on her lip. Down her chin.

Blood.

She sneered and rubbed her mouth with the back of her forearm.

"This is about the fucking Doctor?!" She called in a moment of stillness. "He was dead before I even woke--"

Steam hissed, forming trails of white clouds, in the Android's wake. The distance was closed before she could finish her thought, and its pointed fingers shot toward her chest. This time, the back of her arm bashed against its, deflecting the strike to the side just enough for white flashes of Ki to burst from its fingertips.

Another near miss. Far, far too close for her comfort by now.

"What do you want? His lab? His projects?" She asked between deflects and dodges -- no counterattack came from her at all. Everything dedicated just to not getting hit like that again. "All you had to do was ask. I would have given it to you!"

Its foot impacted her crossed arms with enough force that she felt her bones tremble within. Even in the air, she was forced back a few feet -- a distance that was instantly closed by the Android.

She could keep up with it now; its patterns were showing and her body adapting. But that didn't change the lead it had gotten in those first precious moments. While she was winded, it barely had dents. Ki fizzled around her body, like sparks of static growing larger, denser by the moment.

If she didn't end this quickly, then she would have to...

Its fist grazed along her cheek so fast that the wind alone drew a line of red. Another opening, finally.

She pivoted, lowered herself to dodge its follow up while getting herself into position. Her arm reeled back, tight against her body, and both Ki-infused fists cackling with anticipation. With a grunt, she threw the first forward, toward his gut. The second followed a split second later, swinging upward to catch the Android's chest or chin as it doubled over.