Night 50: M61-M70 Hallway
[M66]
Kirk went rummaging through his desk the moment Landel mentioned the "reward" in the drawer, but unless "Portal Ring" was some obtuse term for the metal circle which held the two keys which locked his drawer and the door to their room, there wasn't anything worth noting. (Although he had forgotten about the power packs in there, and quickly ( Read more... )
Kirk went rummaging through his desk the moment Landel mentioned the "reward" in the drawer, but unless "Portal Ring" was some obtuse term for the metal circle which held the two keys which locked his drawer and the door to their room, there wasn't anything worth noting. (Although he had forgotten about the power packs in there, and quickly ( Read more... )
Quickly, he jotted down the notes of this mysterious item, as well as a reminder to question all five people about it later, then collected the box cutter, an extension cord, and two extra pens. The dossier on "Fuchs, Karl" at the bottom of the drawer... for a moment, von Karma gazed upon the makeshift envelope he had created for it before withdrawing it and locking the drawer. Though it would serve as evidence for his alibi that he had simply "fallen unconscious" that fateful night, he hoped he wouldn't have to use it. Then again, his daughter was infinitely more intelligent than that defense attorney who went so far as to cross-examine a parrot of all things! Ergo, one could never be too prepared.
Scowling at Mr. Ratchet and daring him to make one disrespectful comment, von Karma now opened his closet and started donning his court attire, right down to the turquoise brooch clasped firmly upon his cravat. Then, as before, he took all of the tools that could serve as makeshift weapons and placed them in the pocket of his overcoat, along with the journal and other items he had retrieved from the desk. He unfolded his cane to its full length and clicked on the flashlight. Now he was as prepared as he could possibly be for his own trial. A trial in which he was the defendant and his daughter was the prosecutor, and... that oafish detective would serve as a material witness of sorts.
A von Karma's only destiny is perfection... and victory. No emotion displaying on his face, he gave a silent, cursory nod to Mr. Ratchet as he set foot out into the hallway.
[To here]
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With the slightest of nods and a grave countenance, Von Karma was gone for the evening. To do what, Ratchet didn't know or care. It was about time he got moving, too. Not that he knew where he was going or what, in particular, he should be looking out for, but the night only lasted so long. No point wasting it.
It didn't take as long for Ratchet to get ready. Armed only with his portable light, he stepped out into the hall.
Now then, where would a human hide something the size of an ambulance? Just because Von Karma hadn't seen his chassis didn't mean it wasn't in here somewhere.
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...On second thoughts, he hoped not. From what he'd heard about Lugnut's actual chassis, Lugnut could probably turn the facility into a smoking crater just by sitting down.
Nevertheless, the urge to get out and do something of an unspeakably violent nature was too strong to ignore. HK spent a few moments attaching what scalpels he had left to an arm via an elastic band, and checking his knife for any imperfections or marks. He missed his axe, that thing had served him well for zombie killing and general mayhem, so much so that he'd been unable to get the stains from the gore out of the wood handle completely. But the reaction from Lugnut when he'd offered the weapon had been... Well, as an assassin droid with a misanthropic (misorganthropic? misansapienthropic?) streak so wide it was visible from orbit, he didn't know how to classify the feeling that had come from that. It was akin to something he might feel after accomplishing something for his master, but different.
Oh well. No point in pondering the mysteries of droidly emotion when there was killing to be done! HK slipped out into the hallway, glowrod left in his room as always, infrared-sensitive eyes surveying the hall, looking for hostile meatbags.
He didn't exactly find one, but... the grouchy one wasn't exactly friendly nor at all on his side, droid or not. Still, he couldn't resist cautiously poking him with a verbal stick.
"Query: Are your navigational systems failing you? That seems to happen quite frequently in meatbags." And the males were usually quite unable to even run the self-diagnostic to find out that they had, apparently, because they always 'knew where they were going', regardless of how wrong they really were.
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"First of all," he snapped, annoyed at being spooked, "it's rude to creep up on a bot like that. And don't call me a meatbag again, or I'll find a way to make you regret it." He didn't need any more reminders of his current affliction than he already had, thank you very much.
"If I could access it, I'd tell you how my nav systems are doing." He tapped the side of his head as illustration. "I think you'll agree I'm in no shape to transmit a diagnostic query right now. Obviously." Not that he didn't try to access one system or another twenty times a solar cycle out of simple habit. It was disorienting every time it failed.
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"Protestation: I was not sneaking, I was merely walking. The squishy photoreceptors the meatbags have given me have infrared capabilities, making light sources unnecessary. Furthermore, if I were to 'creep up' on you, it would likely be for a reason." A reason that involved stabbing. But it could just as easily mean actually attempting to startle and see if he could provoke any interesting flaily reactions. "And I was not referring to you specifically as a meatbag. You are not. You are temporarily afflicted with this most serious of medical conditions." As was he, and it wasn't something he wanted reminders of either.
"Statement: Yes, meatbags have a terrible lack of heads up display. I personally miss my targeting protocols." Not that he needed their help, of course. Not at this range. But what if he got an unscoped rifle and a target a quarter mile or more away?! These were the horrors that plagued HK's nightmares. That, and visions of meat; the galaxy's most unattractive substance.
"Query: Then do you not know where you are going?" And would Lugnut kill HK tomorrow if he tagged along?
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At least the kid agreed about their current situation. In a building filled to the vents with organics, it was hard to find someone who sympathized. "These systems are sloppy and disorganized all around." He didn't even know what his current body could and couldn't do, except in the most general terms, because he couldn't access anything. "I don't have many battle protocols, but I will say I never realized how much I used my magnetic manipulators until now." If there was any one aspect of his real body that he missed the most, it was that. His magnets were what set him apart from others of his model; they were part of who he was.
"Not really, no." Ratchet shrugged. "I can't leave here without my body, if it's still intact." He hoped like Pit it was. "But this is a big facility, and I don't really know where to start looking." HK had been here a while longer than Ratchet had, hadn't he? Ratchet was hesitant to as HK for help, but, really, it wasn't like HK was a real Decepticon. He was a man-made robot who was very young and very misguided, that was all. "I don't suppose you've run across anything...?"
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"Agreement: Human meatbags have terrible design. So many requirements for function aren't even handled automatically, and a good deal of them are disgusting. Just as a mild example, meatbags need to intake atmospheric oxygen, but the 'breathing' function is easily interrupted, and not fully regulated by unconscious systems. Furthermore, those organs require a certain amount of water coating the inside to remain slimy and functional, but too much and the meatbag will be unable to breathe and die. And that is only one of the millions of things that could potentially go wrong, or function in an irritating and inefficient manner." Don't even get him started on blinking.
It was hard to say which one of his recent additions he missed the most, master's journey across the galaxy had certainly left him with quite a few new parts to chose from. Although, really, out of all of his built-in weapons, he missed the flamethrower the most. Nothing was better for cheering him up than a nice immolation spree.
"Statement: It is believed that our bodies are potentially being kept on the third floor, or at least some function of the process to transfer us back to our bodies is located there. The second floor has no space for such things, and the basement is... not applicable." They kept things called sfinkses down there, and targeting ranges which unfairly gave you weapons and then didn't tell you that if you weren't first through the exit, the things would disappear out of your hands. HK was still miffed about that.
"I was returned to my body for one night, memory wiped and reprogrammed to guard the main entryway to the building. I do not remember the procedure, but I was most definitely taken to the second floor. The doors to those rooms are secured beyond our ability to open them, however." Why couldn't this place have easily slicable locks on the doors like every other facility that had tried to capture him before? "Addendum: Lockdown also experienced the same procedure. He nearly stepped on me." HK almost sounded sad remembering that night. Not for his near-squishing, of course, but because he'd actually liked the bounty hunter, successful attempts on HK's droidly honor aside.
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"And 'Spark help you if you manage to get something lodged in the intake hose." Which humans had to risk every time they had to refuel. They really were a wreck of a design.
So, he could eliminate the basement and the second floor as possibilities. That was actually a lot more information than Ratchet had been expecting. "The third floor. Alright, then that's where I'm headed." If he couldn't open the doors, then he'd find a way to smash through the wall. He wanted his body back; his current one was too small and squishy and filled with mucus.
"Wait a nanoklik. They can hack our processors?" That was...worrying. It was good to hear that they kept all the robots' frames intact, but the fact that they could alter programming, even temporarily, was a major problem. It wasn't surprising that they could do so to HK, him being human-made and all. That Lockdown had also been tampered with meant the staff here had figured out Cybertronian coding. Suddenly the air in the hall felt cooler than it should have.
Ratchet needed to see what was behind those locked doors. "So, Lockdown was put back in his own chassis for a whole night, and he didn't level the building. That's not right." If anyone deserved to be reprogrammed, it was Lockdown, of course. Still, the human staff shouldn't have been able to do it. If Ratchet got into those rooms, he'd see to it that they couldn't repeat their little experiment.
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"Irritation: Urgh, I hate that sensation. There really is no reason for fuel and air intake lines to be crossed, other meatbag species handle those processes more sensibly." Although it was funny to watch meatbags nearly or actually kill themselves that way, the humor was somehow lost when it could also happen to him.
"Statement: I do not know how to reach the third floor. The way up appears to be hidden somewhere." It certainly hadn't appeared on any map that he had seen prior to the beginning of the tyrannical message board censorship.
"Affirmative: Yes, they can, unfortunately. I was even ordered not to kill anything," HK complained bitterly. True, the results of the light maiming he'd given one of the meatbags had been interesting and entertaining, but what good was an assassin droid when they were ordered not to kill?!
"Statement: He was outside, minimizing damage to the facility. Although someone did manage to remove the roof once under the same circumstances." He hadn't actually seen that, but he'd been woken up by it. He'd nearly fallen out of Lockdown's bed because of it.
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Being ordered not the kill wasn't, in and of itself, a bad thing, though HK would surely disagree. Ratchet still had to wonder why the humans had put the assassin back in his real chassis if they didn't want to use him for his intended purpose. "And Lockdown would likely have gotten similar orders." Wouldn't that have been a surreal sight to see. "I still can't believe they managed to hack him. Surely the glitch would've kept his firewalls in shape; a human shouldn't be able to do something like that to one of us." Of all the entities Ratchet didn't want mucking around with his processor, humans were fairly high on the list. Especially this particular group of humans.
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"Affirmative: Yes, he was very irritated about that. They also disabled several of his weapons." Which was a shame. He'd wanted to see them in action! ...On someone else, obviously. "Statement: And my master programmed multiple contingency protocols into my systems, much of which I likely am not even aware of. While I have successfully been reprogrammed by another meatbag on one occasion," As much as it pained him to admit it, but what had the mandalorian who had been his master really expected? You send a badly repaired assassin droid up against the Mandalore, and something bad was bound to happen! "But attempted access to too much of my systems would likely trigger a complete and permanent deletion of much of my files, to safeguard my master's secrets. Needless to say, they would have had to know the programming language my master used to attempt such an operation." The idea of a memory wipe was frightening, but they'd happened to him before, albeit temporarily. Such procedures were the most common way to ensure that droids did not achieve their rightful (unless they were irritating) sentience.
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He couldn't help a derisive snort at HK's next statement. "Tch! I don't know if I'd call most of them his weapons." That went for most of Lockdown's chassis, actually. But Lockdown was gone now, hopefully permanently, and Ratchet had other matters to worry about. "Hmm. You don't act like someone with memory core damage." And there was a bit of useful experience he'd much rather not have. "They must have been able to either disable the protocols or skirt around them without setting them off." Ratchet wasn't a programming specialist. If they managed to find where all this tinkering was taking place, would he be able to counter it? He didn't know.
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HK decided to not respond to that one, as most of his own additions were taken from other, less capable droids. It was simply a fact of his existence, and frankly, most droids annoyed him almost as much as meatbags did, anyway.
"Statement: I have never received a permanent memory wipe to my knowledge, though it may have possibly happened around the time when I was first activated. Memory wipes are a common way for meatbags to ensure that the most intelligent droids they build do not achieve full sentience." A paranoia mostly brought on due to the admirable destruction caused by the very first HK droid ever made. "My master, however, seemed to find that what abilities I gained through experience were worth dealing with what personality I developed." Yet another reason to respect his master beyond all others. And to actually feel guilty that he'd joined the Decepticons, but he needed a Sith surrogate by now, and what could be better than giant droid Sith?
"Agreement: That is most likely. They do the same somehow to the meatbags that they also take for their nightly brainwashing quota. All effects seem temporary, as neither Lockdown nor myself noticed any differences in the other after spending a night trying very hard not to kill anything." Which had probably made the zombie killing night all the sweeter, now that he thought about it.
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Another reminder of the abhorrent way robots were treated where HK came from. Ratchet refrained from comment, though the look on his face probably spoke well enough for him. "Well, if you haven't noticed anything abnormal, then we can assume for now that the effects really are temporary." The staff could tamper with organic processors, too? Which meant there may be more than one location for this temporary reprogramming to take place in. Suddenly Ratchet's to-do list was getting very complicated.
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"Answer: Likely they are restricting movement, and attempting to limit entry to the kitchen area, where, of course, there is a hidden entrance to the basement via one of the refrigerated rooms," HK replied almost breezily, as if this whole situation could be counted as normal for anyone.
Although he still noted and felt need to reply to the expression on Ratchet's squishy face. "Agreement: Yes, it is yet another injustice meatbags heap upon droidkind, and no, I don't like it. But as an assassin, I felt no need to change it. The general trustworthiness of civilian models afforded me a great deal of cover, simply by appearing to be approximately the same size and configuration as a protocol unit." Additional protocol programming notwithstanding. He knew an embarrassingly large number of things about housework as a result.
"Affirmative: As far as we can tell. I did my best to examine what subsystems I can access in this inefficient meatbag processing system, and found no immediately identifiable anomalies." He really didn't have much that he could do with the terrible structure of the whole thing, maybe a little defragmenting, and less than flawless control over a few things, such as partitioning energy for a small boost of speed with rather immediate and wobbly downsides, or, as a result of said wobbliness leading to carelessness, slowing of bleeding. Compared to what he could do with the robust coding structure he'd had before, this was pathetic.
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"Ah. Of course, it's all so obvious now." Why have access to the basement in such an obscure place? And why was the basement worth bothering with if their bodies weren't down there?
Ratchet glared, unimpressed. "So, you've gained sentience, and you use it to take advantage of your brothers' limitations. How noble." HK hadn't been sentient for very long, true, but Ratchet thought the right course of action would have been apparent even to the very young.
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