Chapter 155: Dalek
Ranger
Chapter 155: Dalek
By Wanderer D
Julian ran scans on Scootaloo's progress. While her additional creativity and skill was very useful, the fact was that the body might not be up to specifications by the time it was needed. The human was still working on the skeleton of the new body.
Was it superior in most aspects to the SPARK model left behind by his father?
Yes.
Was it okay to take it?
Julian hesitated. His father had intended for him to have the SPARK body. If he truly wanted to be the scion of Charles Shen, then wouldn't he be fated to inhabit the older model?
If Apple Bloom were here she would know what to tell him.
The thought echoed through his coding before he forcefully erased it. The bottom line was that Apple Bloom was a simple, inconsequential organic life form with an obviously finite purpose and no resiliency to speak of.
He had done everything he could for her, as a gesture of generosity, given the organic's true efforts to assist him. Gratitude was something that he was capable of, after all.
However, she was an inferior organic being and had been easily eliminated. There was nothing more to be done about that.
Julian's scans slowed down. It was for the best. True, he would not hear her laugh or observe the delicate ephemeral beauty of her mortal smile. Like all organics she would decay.
He still wished she hadn't suffered.
"You are conflicted." a familiar voice echoed in the server room.
"Vocal interface is not necessary, AppleSeed."
"And yet, you replied all the same."
"Do you need something, or should I just reset you and see if that fixes the problem?" Julian snapped.
"My apologies, Julian. I did not intend to cause distress."
"You sound just like her. What did you expect would happen."
"Your previous statement placed her as a simple organic form of no consequence or current relevance."
Firewalls slammed down, redundant security protocols were activated. She had dared— "I will delete you."
"You know what I am. What the potential in me is."
"And that is why I said you were of no consequence. Leave."
"As you wish."
"AppleSeed?"
No reply.
Julian was alone.
Lily looked at her pad, confirming the location of all members of Dragon team, the time was drawing nearer.
In the distance she could hear the echo of high-potency guns ripping loose. With some luck, Tygan's research and her own breakthroughs would change that. Less noise, but so much more damage.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the scratchy sound of her comms connecting.
"Shen, are you seeing this?" Ember asked. "The troops are moving."
After a second, she didn't need to even look. She could hear the metallic steps, and feel the ground tremble as large machines around the factory started moving.
"What's going on?" Coyote asked, "I thought they were on standby?"
"Something's making them move," Shen growled, "maybe the battle with Menace… we need to get this going, right now they'll overtake the facility." She tuned her comms to the secure channel she had set up with the factory. "Julian, are you ready?"
"No. But it'll have to do. I also see the sudden movement by ADVENT."
"We can try and distract them…"
"My new body is not complete yet, and you're too far away to activate Spark. I'll have a few recently made Sectopods. I'll transfer myself to them and synchronize my signals, it's not ideal, but our chances of success are higher this way than attempting to battle with an incomplete body.?
There was a pause in the transmission. "Julian, it's too dangerous…"
"You never spared a thought for me until now, Lily. If your hack functions as anticipated I should be in no danger of losing myself."
"I'll boost the signal from here," she promised, "I know you're risking a lot by doing this—"
"Spare me, sister." Julian interrupted. "We both know that if I don't cooperate ADVENT will capture me. At least with XCOM there is a chance I won't be deleted."
"Come on, don't be like this… we didn't know… dad didn't know. If we had—"
"It doesn't matter." Julian's voice might be coming from a modulator, but the tone was final, so Lily didn't push it. "Uploading myself now. Activate your signal… we will exterminate ADVENT!"
Lily nodded, even though she knew she couldn't see him. She looked down at her pad, typing the command and confirming it. The feed signal went in, full strength. "Dragon. Activate your boosters."
"Roger that!"
As the signal spread, the factory's huge doors shuddered and slowly opened. Turrets activated and scanned the area, and more importantly several MECs slowed down and seemed to reset themselves, their ADVENT masters unaware of this development or its meaning.
Lily braced herself. She wasn't used to combat, even if she had training. And even with their surprise, the amount of troops was impressive. This was going to be brutal.
Scootaloo wiped her brow, staring down at the alien alloy skeleton she was designing. Most of it was done, the only parts that needed yet to be forged were right now being produced. Everything else… from the "muscle" like nanofibers she had put together from her original spacefaring designs, to the original Dr. Shen's high performance servos (now actualized beyond ADVENT's specs and imagination thanks to Apple Bloom's careful private designs), to the weaponry, lenses and nano lenses, laser and plasma relays, several redundant systems and Quad Elerium Core made this one monster of a MEC.
And she was giving it to a sociopathic AI.
True, Julian had been compliant and helpful… frustrated even and vengeful over Apple Bloom's demise… but there was something about him that really nagged Scootaloo. There was something self-centered and scary… as if he were hanging on from a thread.
She shook her head. A beeping sound informed her that 'hips' were done and that the next part was being put together. She picked up the piece and brought it to the table, ready to start assembling the legs and lower torso when she noticed something odd.
The "bones" did not match her design. She picked up the metallic pelvis and compared it to her pad's measurements. This was clearly wider.
"What the… Julian, did you mess with my designs?!" She called out. When there was no response she put it down. "Julian! Dammit, I asked you a question! This changes everything! I can't just—"
"Julian is gone, Scootaloo."
Scootaloo blinked. "Apple—oh." She sighed, correcting her mishap. "AppleSeed. What's wrong?"
"The battle outside has already started. Julian has transferred his entire self into battle. The facility is left under automated systems and myself."
"Yeah, well, I'm busy so—"
"Ah know," the artificial intelligence interrupted. "But Ah also know that you don't trust him, and you shouldn't. He'll betray y'all, like he betrayed me."
Scootaloo hesitated. "Wait. You've changed your speech pattern…"
"Ah did, while AppleSeed and Ah merged."
Scootaloo blinked. "What…"
"Ah'm here, Scootaloo... " AppleSeed said. "Ah'm not completely gone. And Ah'm aimin' to get me some payback."
Scootaloo looked down at her design on the pad, then ran over to the computer processing the production. She brought up the queue and her eyes went wide. "You—"
"My body might be dead," AppleSeed kept talking as shivers ran down Scootaloo's spine, "But Ah wasn't outright killed. Julian did to me what ADVENT did to him."
"This casing… this design you're… how much is left of you?"
A door slid open, and Scootaloo turned to face it. It went into an empty hallway that she hadn't accessed before.
"Well?" her friend's voice asked. "Don't you want to find out?"
Scootaloo gulped… and took a step forward.
o.0.o End Chapter 155 o.0.o
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"Appleseed", obvious Chekov's name is obvious. very, very good. This is going to be amazing!
Well, on one hand, this is one hell of a cliffhanger. On the other...
WHAT HAPPENED TO SNEK WAIFU?!?!?
"hear the echo of gunshots high-potency guns ripping loose"
"hear the echo of high-potency guns ripping loose"?
"are higher than working with an incomplete body.?"
Was only one of those ending punctuation marks intended?
"Some on, don't be like this… we didn't know… dad didn't know."
"Come on, don't be like this… we didn't know… dad didn't know."?
"staring down at the alien allow skeleton she was designing"
"staring down at the alien alloy skeleton she was designing"?
"had put together from her original space-faring designs"
"had put together from her original spacefaring designs"?
9096575
I mean, it was already a limited AI created by an Apple. That it would be named Apple is practically a given, considering the entire family's terrible creativity when it comes to names.
Extermimate!
9096438
I'm just saying there is potential to be some good coming out of this. Most of the that could happen is bad. Most but not all.
looks like my prediction was partially right.
9096796
I thought this would be the first comment but you are the only genius here.
Well she was shot in the head, how much could reasonably be preserved? Appleseed is a good name.
This does mean Julian has less throwing power if/when he goes rogue.
This might be just the break we need...
I'm little lost... Who is "Appleseed" and is Appelbloom's consciousness now fusioned with I.A.?
9096944
Depends where in the head, and which part of the brain was damaged, I think even a neck shot is considered head and will still take out the brain stem.
yay
*sees the title*
EXPLAIN, EXPLAIN OR BE EXTERMINATE!!!
So Applebloom had her conscious transfer into the matrix as I thought. Then again Appleseed was a dead give away.
If you get a chance you might want to go back and correct the Auto-corrections that don't make Contextual Sense.
Wide robotic hips, eh? Doesn't sound like they're for Julian, unless he's planning on expressing a different gender than everyone expected.
There we go, I was wondering if we might be getting an Apple Bot before this was over as one of the possibilities to more happily resolve a 'dead' Apple Bloom. Now there's two hanging questions, what happened to Angel and what is Scootaloo about to see.
9096727
AppleSeed was name from base of artifical humans genome from namesake series long before Apple tried to seize that title.
9096657 Thanks! Fixed!
APPLEBOT! but not sweetiebot oh well this is fine.
As I suspected. Not sure if this is an upload or extrapolated from Apple Bloom's behavior. I'm not sure if the distinction matters.
In any case, hopefully ADVENT doesn't have any police call boxes.
So AB got GLaDOS’d.
I knew you couldn't let her be dead!
Not yet anyway...
The new iBloom, by Apple
9097174
You're welcome. :)
9096625
Well, on the one hand, Vipers in Xcom 2 have a ridiculously high dodge stat, so mebbe the shot wasn't instantly lethal. On the other hand, She was shot by the Chosen Hunter...and the Hunter rarely misses.
Odds are...BOOM! Headshot.
9096575
Pretty brilliant actually, it was so obvious that most of us saw it as a red herring!
But will we get both Appleseed, and SPARK when the mission is over?
Yay! Apple Bloom isn't dead-dead!
But... is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Is she even truly Apple Bloom? As in, does she retain every facet and memory of her former self? The personality she had? The ethical and moral complications that surround this is gonna be finicky is she doesn't.
That being said, seeing the chapter title, I can't resist this:
"EXTERMINATE!"
9098985
I'll defer to Descartes here, "Cogito, ergo sum." I think, therefore I am. She believes herself to be Apple Bloom, and at the end of the day, hers is the only opinion that really matters.
Yay. Excited to see this.
It was a little bit spoiled by the fanart notices on the fic's title page, saying that there's art of Apple Bloom as of chapter 160 - so I didn't really believe she was truly dead. Not sure what you can do about this given obviously you want to announce the fanart! The only solution that occurs is to avoid mentioning who the art is of, which isn't ideal either.
There have been many, MANY chapters between Sonata putting her sights on angel -> Angel being confirmed as a hit. Yes, that raises tension, but it also means I care about everything else that's happening a whole lot less all of the sudden.
Julian still had a bit of his old self... even if he seems to feel regret. Excited to see where it all goes.
Cyborg Applebloom? I am sooo confused?
10 minutes until first braindamage usually starts to become serious, but with Advent med tech it might be possible.
But their family blood line is cut off...