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FIC - Bluescreen - part four + ART
Title: Bluescreen (part four)
Author: squeakyorm
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: made-up slang, some swearing. AU.
Length: 1900 words or so
Characters/Pairing: Deidara's POV - possibly SasoDei at some point in the future, perhaps. I'm not promising anything - this isn't a romance fic - but if there's any pairing it'll be that. The only characters likely to appear extensively in the near future are Akatsuki, but a fair few others are due to worm their way into things as time goes on.
Summary: Deidara-centric Akatsuki-fic set in a dystopian sci-fi/cyberpunk AU - that's pretty much all there is to say, really.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
I sit bolt upright, like, frozen, staring at the door.
And there's that thump again. THUMP. Who knocks like that? Seriously, yeah, it's like one step off from whacking into it with a battering ram or something, it sounds like. I stay right where I am - whatever - I mean, whoever the hell that is, they can't know I'm in here if I don't make any noise, unless they got heat vision, yeah -
- Heat vision.
I don't use mine often enough for it to be second nature, yeah. Honestly, with the implant, I like to keep it that way. Not that it don't come in handy. Like now. I switch it on and squint my real eye shut, and the world goes black apart from the shifting mass of colour on the other side of the door.
It doesn't look human. Too big, yeah. Wrong shape, unless it was some kind of fucked-up hunchback twist, and even then the heat's wrong. Nothing made of meat comes up patterned like that. It's too cold, and where it's warm is uneven. Motors or something, yeah - something not quite like a regular robot, but ... I dunno.
One big cold arm lifts - and then thump. Another knock.
I get up, release the heat vision, open my real eye. I figure it's gotta know I'm here, yeah, as far as robots honestly know anything; don't know why, don't know how, don't know who the hell sent it - I'm better bothered with getting away than finding out, except that it's still raining and all my damn exits are blocked off. Never fucking thought of that, did I? Shit. I was figuring on just holing up here until the rain stopped, thought the rain would stop anything coming in ... I didn't figure on any damn robots.
Be too late to hide. Nowhere to hide anywhere. It knows I'm here. So I let out this big sigh - and to be honest it's kinda shaky, not that I really want to admit it - and take a step towards the door, and yell, "Yeah, I'm in here, what d'you want?"
There's this moment of quiet, and then it speaks from behind the door and the voice is this ... it's fucking creepy, yeah. It's like ... it's low and gruff and evil, and it sounds like rust. I'm still saying 'it'. The voice is male if it's anything, but it's not the kind of voice you wanna call human, yeah.
"Open the door."
I stare at the door, tense all over. "No. Who are you?"
It replies, immediately. "Open the door, Deidara."
It's almost familiar. There's something, something I can't grab, that's familiar, but maybe I just think that 'cause it says my name, and that's freaking me out enough that I don't stop to think very long about what it is about it that's pulling on my memory.
"How d'you know my name? I know you're a robot, yeah. Who sent you?"
It laughs. "Are you going to open this door or not?"
I don't reply, and apparently that's enough for it 'cause then there's this crash and this blade drives through the door - clean through it, lock and everything. As soon as it stops moving so fast I can see it's not really a blade as much as it's like a spike, a sharp end to this long, jointed thing that's making totally short work of the door. It just falls inwards, and the robot steps in.
It's like a tank, some freakish wrong-looking tank with four legs. The front ones are arms, but it's walking on them even though they're uneven - one of them's this huge shining reinforced thing with these seams in the metal where you can tell something's gonna push out or something, weapons, probably, and the other one .. just looks too real. Like a human arm. Not quite, it'd look wrong on a human, but on this, yeah, it looks too real.
Its fake face is scowling, like it can't really do anything else or something, yeah, but the weird hinged mouth is sort of twisting into some kind of nasty smirk. I want to leave out the skylight and make a run for it, but I can still hear the rain pounding on the roof and like hell I want my skin burnt off. Not when I don't know what the hell is with this machine, yeah. So I only take one step away from it, and glare at it, for all that's worth if it can tell human expressions, and I'm about to ask it what it wants when it interrupts me:
"You'll come with me."
I stare. "No. What if I don't wanna?"
"You don't get a choice, brat." It takes another step into the room, knuckling, like a gorilla. Doesn't make it look stupid, though, yeah. Something about the way it's looking at me is like it thinks it's smarter than me. And the way it talks. Brat? Who says brat? Somewhere its programmers are probably laughing or something.
"Oh yeah?" I want to step back as it steps towards me, but man, I got nothing. This room's too small. I got a few little bombs up my arm, but this close range, they'd take me out too, and I've got called hasty before, but I'm not stupid. "Come with you where? You're rainproof, yeah? Well I'm not. You wanna drag me through the rain there'll be nothing left to come with you when you're done, yeah, and I know this place is too old for a tunnels exit -"
"We will wait," it says, "Until the rain stops." It sounds pissed off. Really pissed off. "You weren't planning on going anywhere, were you?"
"You broke the door."
"You weren't opening it."
"What about rats?"
It gives me a withering look. Figures the face is pretty flexible, or something. "Can't you handle rats?"
"Hey! Just 'cause you've got a built in rocket launcher and machine guns or whatever, yeah -"
"Tch. Perhaps you'd be better off dead after all, if you can't even cope with rats."
"Hey -"
"Don't get your knickers in a twist. My orders are to retrieve you in one piece."
Knickers. Nice. I scowl at it. "Yeah? What's that, first law or second, 'cause -"
"Asimov can go fuck himself," it says, deadpan.
I just raise my eyebrow and start to sort of edge back towards the chair. This one robot I used to know a couple of years back used to lock into emergency programming whenever anyone made any sudden movements. It was some sort of error or something, and this one looks in better nick than that, yeah, but old habits die hard, I guess. It watches me, but it doesn't stop me or say anything, so I sit down. Don't take my eye off it, though.
So. Can't go anywhere, with the rain. By the sounds of it this thing isn't gonna crump me, yeah, even if it is an illegal robot, but it's still standing right by the door. I can see past it, to the room behind, and the skylight's .. gone. There's just this hole in the ceiling - where it must have come in, I guess. It's pretty big, but then so is the robot, yeah. I reckon I'm faster than it is ... so once the rain lets up, I reckon I can make a go of a dash through the roof ...
... I'm looking at the hole still and I don't reckon it's stupid, yeah, so I glare at the robot and make an excuse.
"It's cold in here now, yeah. Why'd you have to leave a bloody great hole in the ceiling like that and then break the door down too?"
It rolls its eyes - and every time something like that happens I swear it kinda surprises me, 'cause you don't expect something that basically looks like a tank with a face to have the programming to do that kind of facial emotional stuff, never mind having a face that can move that much. "Can't stand that, either?" It makes a sort of tutting noise, but it sounds a bit mechanical. "Kisame was really recommending you heartily, you know. I expected better."
"Yeah, well - wait, you know Kisame?"
it stares at me like it wants to laugh, or that's what it looks like, but its voice is still deadpan, annoyed. "You really are monumentally stupid, aren't you? Of course I know Kisame." It gives me this long stare, like, scrutinising. "I'm from Akatsuki."
"You're from what?"
"Akatsuki," it says again, and I can hear it means I should know what it's talking about. "You've been working for us for the last few months, idiot."
Shit. Fucking shit.
"Well no-one ever told me a name, yeah. Stuff like this, you don't ask!"
"Then you're an idiot."
I glare at it. This is - fuck. This so many kinds of not good, yeah. They found me. They fucking found me, they - "How?"
"What?"
"How the hell did you find me?"
It pauses, looking at me like it's trying to decide whether to tell me or not, and then says, "Spyware."
"You gave me fucking spyware?! You fuckers -"
"I can remove it. If you come with me."
Oh, this is fucking brilliant. No wonder I was getting nightmares, yeah. No wonder my head hurt. Fucking spyware! "Jah, what's your error?! I don't want any of this full-time employment shit, I just want to make my art, yeah -"
"You don't have a choice," it snaps.
"Yeah? You said your orders were to bring me back in one piece, yeah. That's first law and second law, and even if you do have some kind of circuit malfunction -"
And that's when its tail slams me into the wall. I thought it was just a spike on the end, but it figures it must have opened out or something into some kind of pincer thing, 'cause it's pinning me to the wall either side. I want to struggle or something but there's these needles on the inside of each of the spikes and from the way they're glistening I really, really don't want a scratch from one of them, yeah.
"Do not assume I have any obligation to treat you pleasantly, brat. My orders are to bring you back in one piece - ideally. If you continue to annoy me it will hardly be difficult to claim you fought back too hard for that to be an option." It narrows its eyes. "Touch one of these needles and you'll be out cold for twelve hours - and to be honest, for me, that would be far more tolerable than having to put up with you conscious."
I stare down at the metal pincers, and I'm kinda regretting I took my coat off when I got in here, yeah, 'cause my arms are bare apart from my gloves, and some of those needles are way too close.
"Fine," I say, scowling.
It doesn't reply. Doesn't let me down. Doesn't move.
"Let me go."
"I can't do that, Deidara. Wouldn't want you losing any limbs if you decide to get argumentative, would we?"
I clench my fists, grit the teeth in my hands. "So, what, you're just gonna pin me here 'til the rain stops? Yeah?"
"Yes."
"Fuck you!"
It makes this angry noise and scowls and then I feel these pinpricks pierce my arms, and last thing I'm aware of is it saying something but I don't know what 'cause it's taking all the concentration I've got to stop everything I'm seeing from fuzzing off into black.
And I fail anyway.
*
I also did some illustrations for Bluescreen 'cause I'm a dork like that.
Author: squeakyorm
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: made-up slang, some swearing. AU.
Length: 1900 words or so
Characters/Pairing: Deidara's POV - possibly SasoDei at some point in the future, perhaps. I'm not promising anything - this isn't a romance fic - but if there's any pairing it'll be that. The only characters likely to appear extensively in the near future are Akatsuki, but a fair few others are due to worm their way into things as time goes on.
Summary: Deidara-centric Akatsuki-fic set in a dystopian sci-fi/cyberpunk AU - that's pretty much all there is to say, really.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
I sit bolt upright, like, frozen, staring at the door.
And there's that thump again. THUMP. Who knocks like that? Seriously, yeah, it's like one step off from whacking into it with a battering ram or something, it sounds like. I stay right where I am - whatever - I mean, whoever the hell that is, they can't know I'm in here if I don't make any noise, unless they got heat vision, yeah -
- Heat vision.
I don't use mine often enough for it to be second nature, yeah. Honestly, with the implant, I like to keep it that way. Not that it don't come in handy. Like now. I switch it on and squint my real eye shut, and the world goes black apart from the shifting mass of colour on the other side of the door.
It doesn't look human. Too big, yeah. Wrong shape, unless it was some kind of fucked-up hunchback twist, and even then the heat's wrong. Nothing made of meat comes up patterned like that. It's too cold, and where it's warm is uneven. Motors or something, yeah - something not quite like a regular robot, but ... I dunno.
One big cold arm lifts - and then thump. Another knock.
I get up, release the heat vision, open my real eye. I figure it's gotta know I'm here, yeah, as far as robots honestly know anything; don't know why, don't know how, don't know who the hell sent it - I'm better bothered with getting away than finding out, except that it's still raining and all my damn exits are blocked off. Never fucking thought of that, did I? Shit. I was figuring on just holing up here until the rain stopped, thought the rain would stop anything coming in ... I didn't figure on any damn robots.
Be too late to hide. Nowhere to hide anywhere. It knows I'm here. So I let out this big sigh - and to be honest it's kinda shaky, not that I really want to admit it - and take a step towards the door, and yell, "Yeah, I'm in here, what d'you want?"
There's this moment of quiet, and then it speaks from behind the door and the voice is this ... it's fucking creepy, yeah. It's like ... it's low and gruff and evil, and it sounds like rust. I'm still saying 'it'. The voice is male if it's anything, but it's not the kind of voice you wanna call human, yeah.
"Open the door."
I stare at the door, tense all over. "No. Who are you?"
It replies, immediately. "Open the door, Deidara."
It's almost familiar. There's something, something I can't grab, that's familiar, but maybe I just think that 'cause it says my name, and that's freaking me out enough that I don't stop to think very long about what it is about it that's pulling on my memory.
"How d'you know my name? I know you're a robot, yeah. Who sent you?"
It laughs. "Are you going to open this door or not?"
I don't reply, and apparently that's enough for it 'cause then there's this crash and this blade drives through the door - clean through it, lock and everything. As soon as it stops moving so fast I can see it's not really a blade as much as it's like a spike, a sharp end to this long, jointed thing that's making totally short work of the door. It just falls inwards, and the robot steps in.
It's like a tank, some freakish wrong-looking tank with four legs. The front ones are arms, but it's walking on them even though they're uneven - one of them's this huge shining reinforced thing with these seams in the metal where you can tell something's gonna push out or something, weapons, probably, and the other one .. just looks too real. Like a human arm. Not quite, it'd look wrong on a human, but on this, yeah, it looks too real.
Its fake face is scowling, like it can't really do anything else or something, yeah, but the weird hinged mouth is sort of twisting into some kind of nasty smirk. I want to leave out the skylight and make a run for it, but I can still hear the rain pounding on the roof and like hell I want my skin burnt off. Not when I don't know what the hell is with this machine, yeah. So I only take one step away from it, and glare at it, for all that's worth if it can tell human expressions, and I'm about to ask it what it wants when it interrupts me:
"You'll come with me."
I stare. "No. What if I don't wanna?"
"You don't get a choice, brat." It takes another step into the room, knuckling, like a gorilla. Doesn't make it look stupid, though, yeah. Something about the way it's looking at me is like it thinks it's smarter than me. And the way it talks. Brat? Who says brat? Somewhere its programmers are probably laughing or something.
"Oh yeah?" I want to step back as it steps towards me, but man, I got nothing. This room's too small. I got a few little bombs up my arm, but this close range, they'd take me out too, and I've got called hasty before, but I'm not stupid. "Come with you where? You're rainproof, yeah? Well I'm not. You wanna drag me through the rain there'll be nothing left to come with you when you're done, yeah, and I know this place is too old for a tunnels exit -"
"We will wait," it says, "Until the rain stops." It sounds pissed off. Really pissed off. "You weren't planning on going anywhere, were you?"
"You broke the door."
"You weren't opening it."
"What about rats?"
It gives me a withering look. Figures the face is pretty flexible, or something. "Can't you handle rats?"
"Hey! Just 'cause you've got a built in rocket launcher and machine guns or whatever, yeah -"
"Tch. Perhaps you'd be better off dead after all, if you can't even cope with rats."
"Hey -"
"Don't get your knickers in a twist. My orders are to retrieve you in one piece."
Knickers. Nice. I scowl at it. "Yeah? What's that, first law or second, 'cause -"
"Asimov can go fuck himself," it says, deadpan.
I just raise my eyebrow and start to sort of edge back towards the chair. This one robot I used to know a couple of years back used to lock into emergency programming whenever anyone made any sudden movements. It was some sort of error or something, and this one looks in better nick than that, yeah, but old habits die hard, I guess. It watches me, but it doesn't stop me or say anything, so I sit down. Don't take my eye off it, though.
So. Can't go anywhere, with the rain. By the sounds of it this thing isn't gonna crump me, yeah, even if it is an illegal robot, but it's still standing right by the door. I can see past it, to the room behind, and the skylight's .. gone. There's just this hole in the ceiling - where it must have come in, I guess. It's pretty big, but then so is the robot, yeah. I reckon I'm faster than it is ... so once the rain lets up, I reckon I can make a go of a dash through the roof ...
... I'm looking at the hole still and I don't reckon it's stupid, yeah, so I glare at the robot and make an excuse.
"It's cold in here now, yeah. Why'd you have to leave a bloody great hole in the ceiling like that and then break the door down too?"
It rolls its eyes - and every time something like that happens I swear it kinda surprises me, 'cause you don't expect something that basically looks like a tank with a face to have the programming to do that kind of facial emotional stuff, never mind having a face that can move that much. "Can't stand that, either?" It makes a sort of tutting noise, but it sounds a bit mechanical. "Kisame was really recommending you heartily, you know. I expected better."
"Yeah, well - wait, you know Kisame?"
it stares at me like it wants to laugh, or that's what it looks like, but its voice is still deadpan, annoyed. "You really are monumentally stupid, aren't you? Of course I know Kisame." It gives me this long stare, like, scrutinising. "I'm from Akatsuki."
"You're from what?"
"Akatsuki," it says again, and I can hear it means I should know what it's talking about. "You've been working for us for the last few months, idiot."
Shit. Fucking shit.
"Well no-one ever told me a name, yeah. Stuff like this, you don't ask!"
"Then you're an idiot."
I glare at it. This is - fuck. This so many kinds of not good, yeah. They found me. They fucking found me, they - "How?"
"What?"
"How the hell did you find me?"
It pauses, looking at me like it's trying to decide whether to tell me or not, and then says, "Spyware."
"You gave me fucking spyware?! You fuckers -"
"I can remove it. If you come with me."
Oh, this is fucking brilliant. No wonder I was getting nightmares, yeah. No wonder my head hurt. Fucking spyware! "Jah, what's your error?! I don't want any of this full-time employment shit, I just want to make my art, yeah -"
"You don't have a choice," it snaps.
"Yeah? You said your orders were to bring me back in one piece, yeah. That's first law and second law, and even if you do have some kind of circuit malfunction -"
And that's when its tail slams me into the wall. I thought it was just a spike on the end, but it figures it must have opened out or something into some kind of pincer thing, 'cause it's pinning me to the wall either side. I want to struggle or something but there's these needles on the inside of each of the spikes and from the way they're glistening I really, really don't want a scratch from one of them, yeah.
"Do not assume I have any obligation to treat you pleasantly, brat. My orders are to bring you back in one piece - ideally. If you continue to annoy me it will hardly be difficult to claim you fought back too hard for that to be an option." It narrows its eyes. "Touch one of these needles and you'll be out cold for twelve hours - and to be honest, for me, that would be far more tolerable than having to put up with you conscious."
I stare down at the metal pincers, and I'm kinda regretting I took my coat off when I got in here, yeah, 'cause my arms are bare apart from my gloves, and some of those needles are way too close.
"Fine," I say, scowling.
It doesn't reply. Doesn't let me down. Doesn't move.
"Let me go."
"I can't do that, Deidara. Wouldn't want you losing any limbs if you decide to get argumentative, would we?"
I clench my fists, grit the teeth in my hands. "So, what, you're just gonna pin me here 'til the rain stops? Yeah?"
"Yes."
"Fuck you!"
It makes this angry noise and scowls and then I feel these pinpricks pierce my arms, and last thing I'm aware of is it saying something but I don't know what 'cause it's taking all the concentration I've got to stop everything I'm seeing from fuzzing off into black.
And I fail anyway.
*
I also did some illustrations for Bluescreen 'cause I'm a dork like that.