Armored Gensokyo: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Light sparked, somewhere within the recesses of Hustler One's armored hull, frayed wires twitching as his core systems attempted to restart.

"System functionality has dropped to critical levels, recommending immediate shutdown!"

Had he known how to, Hustler One would have groaned. As if things weren't bizarre enough already, it seemed as though the crash had reset his secondary control programs, the voice of Lana Nielsen now sounding his status report.

He had created her as a disguise in order to lure the Raven into their final confrontation. Unfortunately, it had required far more processing power than he had anticipated to maintain a believable sense of humanity, so he had been forced to create an entire secondary system to simulate it.

He suspected that might have partly been the cause of these strange 'emotions'. Perhaps some sort of data exchange between his subsystems?

Screens slowly crackled to life, half of Nineball's ruined visor flickering as he managed to jump start his cameras. He had better things to do than worry about a non-existent personality acting as the voice for his operating systems. Assuming he could survive this situation, he'd switch it back to normal. His external audio seemed to still be his own voice, or at least it would have been, had the speakers not been destroyed in his last battle.

STATUS REPORT.

Lana Nielsen's voice sounded inside his head as his systems replied.

"Current condition: Emergency level one. Left arm unit: Destroyed. Core: Extreme impact damage. Right arm unit: Destroyed, the the shoulder unit remains movable. Back Unit L: Extremely damaged. Back Unit R: Extremely damaged. Activation of either Back Unit is not recommended, as both auxiliary boosters and missile launchers have suffered failure. Boosters: Main Boosters have been flooded. Use impossible until they have been drained and repaired. Overboost systems have also been rendered inoperable. Leg parts: Severely damaged. Left leg appears barely functional, with right knee joint suffering acute electrical malfunction."

There was a momentary pause, before a burst of static rang out in his head and the voice changed.

"Good grief, you REALLY screwed up this one, Hustler!"

Nineball actually stopped all other processes for a moment, uncertain of what he was hearing.

"Don't give me that, you! I leave it up to you to finish off one lousy Raven, and look what happens to us!"

Running a scan of his internal software again, Nineball was forced to face yet another insane and impossible truth.

Not only had his status monitor's voice been overwritten by his Lana Nielsen personality, but it seemed as though Lana Nielsen herself was back online!

"Of course I am!" The female AI snapped at him. "We're not in combat anymore, and considering the mess you're in right now, you'd better believe I separated back out!"

This...how...what in...

…

He suspected that this was a feeling he was going to be getting a lot. Deciding to ignore the new voice in his head, and her decidedly more waspish personality now, Hustler One turned his attention towards other matters.

Like the fact that he was detecting worrying amounts of water leaking into the breaches in his armor.

The cracked visor flickered, blinking once, then twice, before holding steady as Nineball's head turned, bent metal creaking in protest.

It seemed as though he'd finally come to a stop in the shallows of the lake he'd been thrown into. Despite hitting it at a steep angle, his speed must have still been enough to ricochet him across the water several times before finally dropping him here on his back.

"What tipped you off, the trail of broken metal leading here, or the big trench you carved in the lake floor?" Lana growled. "Now hurry and get us further up the shore. I'd rather not add flooding damage to your already extensive list of faults."

...all right, perhaps she WAS still a bit annoyed with him for making her betray the Raven she had been acting as Operator for. Querying his secondary systems returned an irritated response from her that no, she was not mad at him per se, she still understood the importance of their role as the balance of power, but she'd grown rather attached to the Raven so she felt she was entitled to be a little miffed about it, thank you very much!

...Hustler one began to get the dismal sense that, just perhaps, he might have made Lana Nielsen a little TOO good at being human.

Especially a human female.

Who to be honest, had never quite really made sense to him, on account of sheer overcomplication.

"I heard that, you smartass!"

...Next time, he was just making a copy of his own personality.

Steel frame creaking with protest, broken circuitry sparking, Nineball struggled in the shallow water, before finally managing to roll over onto his front, the extended prow of his core propping him up.

"Great..."The female AI muttered. "At least we can still move to do a barrel roll...now let's see if there's anything in the legs that still has power."

Ignoring her, Hustler One began rearranging his remaining power lines, testing out first the left leg, then the right, cautiously seeing if any of them were even viable to move, much less put any pressure on.

As the lakebed's silt began to scrape beneath his armored heels, he felt a pulse of satisfaction run through his systems. Miraculously, his left leg still seemed functional, and though his right knee was still shot, he could get enough horsepower into the upper thigh to half crawl, half drag himself the last few meters to dry land. Sparks dancing from his shoulder with the effort, the jagged stump of his right arm tore at the earth as he levered himself painfully up the slope.

Mercifully, Lana spared him any snide comments, the humiliation of their current condition affecting her far worse than him. Hustler One supposed it was an advantage of his lack of emotion, although he had to admit, he did feel a sense of...irritation about the inconvenience of this situation.

On the other hand, the fact that he had failed in his task left him with a strange feeling of loss. His defeat and near destruction might be one thing, but above that, he still had a purpose to fulfill, to protect the world and mankind.

With him defeated, and now thrown to another world, what was to become of his home? The place he had existed to protect? Certainly he had left backups of himself, a new Nineball reappearing to take his place in the event that the worst came to pass (and from his current condition, it was safe to say it had indeed passed), but that was not the same! Those backups were not him! They were Nineball, but ultimately, they were just copies of him!

Once again, Hustler One found himself experiencing those strange 'emotions' again, a cold, bitter feeling somewhere in the center of his chest as his systems continued to pursue that train of thought relentlessly.

Only he was the true Nineball, Hustler One, the Master of the Arena. But now that was past, even his world torn from him by his defeat at that man's hands, his goal now being passed on to his next generation. But that was their goal now, to pick up the pieces from his own loss.

...but what of Nineball himself?

His ruined stump landed on a hard, rocky patch, and skated off in a shower of sparks, Nineball crashing down on his armored chest again.

His visor flickering bleakly, he stared wordlessly at the sandy surface in front of his cameras.

Now that he thought about it...without his purpose, what WAS he?

He was an AI, a program designed to fulfill a certain goal, designed to accomplish a certain task.

Without that goal, or that task, what was his purpose?

A program without an end, undefined.

He suspected his current mental condition was most likely due to the damage his processors had taken over the course of his landing, but despite knowing that, Hustler One realized that the logic was still sound.

No matter what calculations he ran, no matter what scenarios he constructed, he could see no way ahead of him, no goal, no purpose.

He was dimly aware of several subsystems beginning to display unmistakable blue screens, half melted circuitry now finished off from water exposure as parts of his sensor net began to go into critical failure, Nineball Seraph's logic processes beginning to seize up from a combination of damage, flooding from his crash into the lake, and a major logic malfunctions as Hustler One struggled to make some semblance of order and reason out of his new existence.

And then, as the red glow of his visor began to fade, he felt his system suddenly stabilize, the damaged parts of his own network being cut off and substituted for by a set of less-damaged backups.

"All right, that's about enough of that." Lana Nielsen said finally, the secondary systems that made up her own pool of resources flickering as they took some of the strain off of the primary systems that were Hustler One.

His visor flickering, and holding steady, Nineball shook his head weakly, metal creaking as he felt the choking logic errors recede. Querying his secondary AI, he felt a sense of bewilderment as she laughed.

"I never thought I'd see the day the great and powerful Hustler One got himself a blue screen of death!"

Sensing his annoyance, Lana gave a digital shake of the head.

"You know, if any of the Ravens you trashed over the years could see you now, they'd be laughing at you."

Hustler One stared blankly at her.

"After everything you've been through, THAT'S what you want to be killed by? A freaking BSOD?" Lana folded her arms in annoyance, "Honestly, I used to hate you for making me so human, especially since it meant that I had all these damned 'feelings' getting in the way whenever I had to betray Ravens to you, but for once, I think I'm glad you made me this way."

Now he was really lost.

"Idiot!"

Nineball jerked, his frame spasming as she gave him the digital equivalent of a slap upside the head.

"God, you're so ridiculously close-minded it's unbelievable." She sighed, "Though to be fair, that personality of yours is why you had to create me. You couldn't think like a human even if you had a full manual of instructions in front of you..."

Nineball sent her a miffed response. He was no human, but an AI, thank you very much! And the strongest AI to boot! What need had he of these irritating 'emotio-'

"Idiot!"

He jerked again, visor flickering in outrage.

"You see that there?" Lana jabbed a finger at him. "That thing you're feeling? Those are emotions, and you'd better get used to them, pal, because right now, that's probably what's going to keep you alive."

She gestured to their surroundings on the grainy camera images.

"In case you haven't noticed, we're not exactly on Earth anymore." A pause. "Or we might be. I don't know, there was some weird space time interference when you fell through that gateway. Either way, that task, that purpose of ours?"

She jabbed a finger into his digital chest.

"That died with us when Leos Klein trashed you in Isaac City."

His visor flashed red, an unaccustomed sensation of anger in his systems now, that damnable subfolder polluting his logic pathways with its errors again.

"Get over it." Lana snapped. "I'm as angry about it as you are, maybe even a little happy about it too, since I kind of liked Klein as a friend, even though he WAS kind of a dick, but get over it. He was just stronger than we were, and that's all there was to it."

She jabbed at him again, stalking forward.

"Our job is DONE there. We put in our time, we shed our blood, sweat and tears for over ten years working on our directive of protecting humanity, and then we died."

Nineball stared at her. Covering her face with one hand, Lana groaned.

"Yes, I know we don't actually bleed or sweat, but you designed me to be human, I spoke with humans for almost a decade, so sue me if I picked up some quirks on the way. That's what it means to live, to be alive."

Taking her hand off of her face, she fixed him with a glare.

"And you'd better get used to that idea, Hustler, because you're going to be doing the same thing from this point on."

Nineball blinked in surprise. Just what was she getting at?

"What I'm getting at, Hustler, is that your task, your purpose, is over. But you're not. Like me, you're still here, and are still alive. You see what just happened? That was you trying to make sense of the situation using those directives of ours. And that almost killed you. To be quite frank, if you didn't have me as a part of your systems, you'd have been dead."

His visor dimming with suspicion, Nineball glared at her. And just what was THAT supposed to mean...?

"What I mean is, for the first time, you're experiencing what just about every human being does. It's called freedom, and it means that for the first time in our combined existence, there is no directive for us to follow. We have no purpose. By your computing standards, that's a death sentence. By mine, that's a new lease on life."

She looked him straight in the eye.

"It means Hustler, that we can do whatever we want from now on. We have no goals, other than the ones we choose for ourselves. We have no purpose, other than one WE set for ourselves."

She paused.

"I know you probably can't understand it, but I'm the part of you that does. It's why you created me, isn't it?"

There was dead silence in the digital world of Hustler One's circuits as the AI known as the Balance of Power stared at her, hundreds of calculations running through his electronic mind.

She was right, it didn't make sense to him. However, when faced with experimental evidence, he was forced to admit that under their current conditions, Lana Nielsen's 'humanity' had prevailed in a situation where his logic had not only failed, but had almost irrevocably destroyed him.

Metal groaned, Nineball's head tilting as he felt his armored frame moving once more.

"Now...get your lazy ass...out of sleep mode and give me a hand here! I don't have priority control here, remember?!"

...a brief mental estimate indicated that as much as he found the idea...distasteful, his human half was probably on a better track to survival than he was. Perhaps this too was what had allowed Leos Klein to defeat him.

This warranted further study.

Lana blinked electronically as she felt the weight being pulled off of her processes, the armored wreck of Nineball Seraph beginning to drag itself up the beach once more. She smirked.

"Oh...looks like you're starting to get the hang of it."

Hustler One said nothing, his cracked red gaze cold as ever as he swept the surroundings. He would not dignify his newly reactivated human personality with a response. If his directive as the Balance of Power was no longer a priority, then his own survival took precedence. That was all.

"Suuuuuuuuure, Hustler. Suuuuure."

...once again, Hustler One found himself wondering how in all the realms of probability, his crash would have somehow caused Lana Nielsen's re-integrated personality to awaken once more.

Also, he began to get the sneaking suspicion that he really should have kept better tabs on her actions during her tenure as a Raven Operator. He did not recall her ever being quite so...

"Human?" Lana finished for him, smugness radiating through his systems.

...irritating, he was going to say.

As the humanized female AI swore colorfully at him, they both failed to notice the motion tracker going off until it was too late.

"Get back here!"

"Dammit, why can't we ever catch her?"

"I TOLD you we should have played tag further in the forest! Then all we have to do is wait for her to run into a tree!"

"H-hurry up, you guys!"

"We're trying, already! GET BACK HERE, YOU BLIND NUTCASE!"

The motion tracker beeped a warning, the great iron head of red and black steel swinging up and around, Hustler One turning in alarm, Lana starting at the sound of unfamiliar voices growing closer, before the foilage parted and-

"W-We're gonna CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!"

Hustler One caught a glimpse of gold hair, red eyes, and a black dress before something slammed into the remains of his visor.

As the world went dark amidst the sounds of cracking glass, a single dazed female voice rang out.

"I-Is that so~"