//------------------------------// // Derpy's fixing misadventures // Story: Synthetic but living: Adventures in Cyberspace // by Dark Nightshade //------------------------------// When Flash dropped her off, Derpy started at the robot for a while, wondering what to do to fit it. She had told Ultrabyte that she would fix it, and fix it she would. Derpy sighed and sat down. She leaned back and closed her eyes. She concentrated on the robot and after a few seconds she felt herself become weightless and enter the robot's body. Again, all she felt was rage from the robot's core, and she get like crying again. She opened her eyes and stared at the typhoon of badly done coding and drifted towards it. It was a little like swimming, but instead of using your arms and legs, you had to control your direction with your mind. As Derpy neared the central coding, it paid her no attention. All it could focus on was to bring death to Ultrabyte. Derpy stared at the coding and wondered where she could start. Randomly, she grabbed onto a bit of code and looked at it. It was part of the battery code. She grabbed another and let the battery code float away. The new one was a bigger, denser bit of code, and was the robots main tracking protocols. Derpy smiled and started ripping it apart. The ripped up parts started disintegrating. Derpy grabbed another code. And she gasped. This one was really important. It was Ultrabyte's image. Where all the rage was focused on. Derpy started tearing that one up as well. As she finished with it, she started grabbing random lines of code and ripped them up, hoping that they were important. As she ripped and ripped, she looked around the white space that took up the rest of the robots body. She grabbed several other lines of code and started floating upwards to an area that seemed different than the others. It seemed clearer, somehow. As she reached it, she gasped and dropped the unripped lines of code. She was staring at herself. Her body was slumped backwards, and the robot hadn't moved. Then again, it couldn't move. She stared at herself through the robot's eye. She looked pretty, and her skirt had crumpled slightly, showing her panties slightly, but fortunately, no one was around to see. Derpy turned back around to the coding swirl and floated back down to it, grabbing and ripping any that came near her. But suddenly, she stopped. A voice had started speaking, not to her, but in general. "Reboot in process," the voice said. "Major code lines destroyed. Major features destroyed. Ultrabyte image destroyed. Ultrabyte code traces destroyed. Current location: Unknown." Derpy realized that it was eventually going ri detect her, and did the smart thing. She started returning to her body. As she did, she also heard "Memory compromised." She returned to her body with a gasp. She scrambled to her feet and hid behind her couch. She lived by herself, which most people didn't believe, but her parents did still check up on her from time to time. Unfortunately, they probably wouldn't for a while. The robot started to boot up and started rising to its feet. "Life form behind couch," its monotone voice said. Derpy started to move, but the couch was tossed aside like a small package. She looked up at the robot and saw its arm turn into something looking like a knife. "Where is Ultrabyte?" It roared. Derpy pointed behind it. The robot turned around. Derpy started running. She managed to get outside and close the door, before the robot lunged out of the window, broken glass falling everywhere. Derpy screamed and started running away. But the robot was faster. It outpaced her in seconds. It reared its knife-hand back, but then they were both distracted by a sound. A car engine roared to life, headlights blinding Derpy. Her eyesight temporarily gone, she couldn't see a hand fanatically waving at her to get out if the way. But she did hear. It was Flash. "Get out if the way!" he yelled. Derpy finally lunged to her left, and Flash gunned to engine, flirting the gas and launching straight into the robot, sending it through the air, and onto Derpy's roof. Derpy scrambled to the car and hopped inside. She closed the door, put on her seatbelt and yelled "Go!" Flash backed up the car, put it into drive, and floored the gas again. The robot, however, wasn't lost so easily. It started running almost as fast as the car, looking like some kind of T-800 model. "It wasn't running this fast earlier!" Flash yelled. "What happened?!" "I don't know!" Derpy exclaimed. "But it doesn't know who Ultrabyte is anymore. That's good, right?" "I guess," Flash said. "Oh, no, red light." Derpy stared out at the upcoming intersection. The light was indeed red. "You may need to run it," Derpy said. Fortunately, at the last minute, it turned red, so Flash actually accelerated. But the robot sped up too. "Where are we going?" Derpy asked. "Anywhere but here," Flash said. "Why is it chasing you?" Derpy rubbed her temples, thinking back to what she heard while she had been inside the robot's mind. "Well, I was destroying some of its more murderous coding when it started talking about how it now doesn't know what Ultrabyte looks like," Derpy said. "I think I may have accidentally made it think I am Ultrabyte." Flash groaned. "Oh, man that's bad," he said. "What happens if it-" Flash's sentence was cut off, however, when the robot landed on the car hood. The robot pointed at Derpy and screeched. "Death to Ultrabyte!" it yelled out. What happened next was so unexpected that no one started screaming until after the robot ran off. The robot morphed its hand into the knife once again and plunged it deep into Derpy's chest, just barely missing her heart. She was so surprised that she didn't start screaming for a few seconds. The robot jumped off and started running as Derpy finally did start screaming. Flash yelled in panic as blood splattered against him and the insides of his car. "Take us to Ultrabyte!" Derpy screamed. Flash, instead of arguing, started moving towards Ultrabyte's and Raw Data's house. "How are you still awake?" Flash yelled. Derpy's only response was letting out a small moan. A minute of high speeds and dangerously fast turns later, they stopped with a lurch outside of Raw Data's house. Flash opened his door, ran to the other side, opened Derpy's door, and dragged her out, blood still pouring out of the wound. It was a miracle she was still alive. Flash propped Derpy against the wall and started hammering on the door. After almost half a minute, Raw Data opened the door. He opened his mouth to say something but Flash had picked Derpy up and rushed inside. Raw Data started yelling. "Oh, what the hell?" he exclaimed. "What happened?" "Can your repurposing machine fix this?" Flash asked, tears actually leaking down his face. Raw Data stared stunned at Derpy, who was barely breathing. Ultrabyte rounded the corner, saw Derpy and the blood, and screamed. "What happened?" she yelled. "Can the repurposing machine fix this?" Flash asked. Derpy let out a pitiful soft moan. Ultrabyte took a few moments to answer, but she finally shook her head. "It can't fix something this bad," she said. She stroked Derpy's face. "Derpy! Can you hear me?" Derpy's head slowly went up and down. "Transfer yourself! Raw Data, get some headgear!" Raw Data sprinted downstairs to the basement, and managed to get some in under a minute. Ultrabyte was talking to Derpy the whole time, telling her to hold on to reality. She was still bleeding out. Raw Data handed Ultrabyte the glasses and Ultrabyte grabbed them, showing them to Derpy. "Come on, Derpy, you can do it!" Ultrabyte said. "Please, transfer yourself into this!" Derpy weakly touched the glasses and coughed up some more blood. She opened her mouth to try and say something, but only let out another soft moan before she collapsed, farted and didn't move again.