[In Transit] Can of Muscle

{{OoC: I ended up starting this just to keep Scarlet's character fresh in my head, while I wait to be assigned somewhere. GMs, please feel free to delete if you aren't happy with me posting here.}}

-Day Three-

“Grey and green… grey and green… These Neppies certainly like their grey and green.”

Scarlet One-One sighed, rubbing her finger against the inside of the Ge-T1 Shuttle as if the paint would just peel off on command. It had been a long flight, but she was staving off checking the chronometer with her mindware because it would just make the whole dreary escapade seem even longer. Alongside her sat a bubble of five more Freespacers in the adjoining seats at the back of the craft, surrounded by an encapsulating horde of brawny true-Nepelsian cadets taking up the rest of it.

Regardless of species, most of them were half asleep due to the previous ordeal that was bootcamp. The spacers in particular were all weird and twitchy. Instead of being their standard hyperactive selves, their bodies were now eating up as much energy as their organs could throw out, leading to thought focus and motor control rather humorously going out the window.

“I don’t like green. It’s all stinky and plant-y and it reminds me of… It reminds me of… YOU!” Scarlet jabbed a finger up to the meek guy in the seat next to her, who quite nearly jumped out of it in response. His name was… Stargazer Seven-Nine, or possibly Spacegazer Three-Nine, or… something.

“…W-Wha!?…” He garbled in response. Scarlet realised she had moved to grab his collar, and forced herself to halt her grasping talon of a hand. “…Erm…” She froze for a moment and looked at the ceiling. “…What was the follow up again? I’m so tired things keep falling out of my head…”

“Ant-ti-tibody One-One!” Spacegrazer Seven-Nine winced in protest, as her hand went ahead and completed grabbing his shirt whist she was distracted. “P-Please go for a walk or s-something!”

Scarlet didn’t consciously agree, but for some reason took it as a command anyway. This shuttle feels so dark and small… to many smelly guys… to much funky phlegm inside my head… to much trouble to think. Her mind ran on autopilot whilst her hands unbuckled the tight harness attaching her to the bucketed seat. Soon enough she was on the isle floor, and crawling along with her unholy mass of black hair dangling before her (not unlike a certain video ghost girl from that Yamataian horror movie).

Oh! What's that smell! The barely conscious spacer lass thought, detecting something sweet enough to cut through even her current haze of the mind. There was a medium sized cheap plastic box below the man’s seat on the left. Infrequent gargling noises informed her that the reasonably heavyset character was in a deep slumber.

…What did Warmonger Hiram say about money-points?… Scarlet futilely struggled to gain ground on her memory. …he said… you give them in trade for things that people put in stores…

This… is not a store. She had to look left and right to confirm the statement, then grasped the box carefully and scuttled back to the back of the craft’s isle with it. If she had raised any attention, nobody was doing anything about it at least. Even the other spacers were too comatose to look over at the item that she had borrowed.

Taking one last smell, Scarlet peeled open the lid and observed the quizzical contents. Hundreds of small objects, shaped somewhat like teeth but with a coloration that faded from white to orange. They were immensely light and soft as foam padding to the touch… “ViciousDelicious Candy Corns.” The side of the box read in fancy print, but this only served to confuse her more. Still, it amused her just prodding at them and watching the mass bounce back stalwartly.

“SEVEN-NINE! STICK YOUR HAND IN THIS, IT’S AWESOME!” Scarlet literally shrieked out at the top of her voice, before hunkering down at the wave of husky grunts in response and holding a finger to her own lips in a typically self-completing fashion. At least she was still sitting on the isle floor so nobody knew where it came from… Well, nobody except Seven-Nine, who was once again looking scared for his life.

“How the hell did you even get recruited?” The startled man responded in an angry whisper.

“…because… I’m a hammer of justice.” Scarlet answered, completely straight faced.

Suddenly, a shadow passed over her and a meaty paw pulled her upright from the floor. Ah, the chunky sleeping guy.

“Is this what you ‘spacers do now? Just nab stuff from under your pal’s noses, and act all coy like we an’t gonna do nothin’?”

“…erm, sorry Warmonger. I was just borrowing. Didn’t realise it was personal candy crons.” She responded with a strained but honest grin. To her bad karma was bad deeds due, no arguing with it. “I suppose karma dictates you should hit me… or do you think that’s too strong maybe, Nine-Seven? This guy is pretty big.”

“Where I come from you don’ slap a gal around for nothin’, but…” He paused, slightly disarmed by the situation but still angry.

“Can I at least block your hand with my face?”

He just shrugged deeply and Scarlet came to realise a crucial, world shattering fact.

“No way! Your breath is all sweet! You eat them!?”

-Day N/A-

Antibody One-One felt a swarm of bubbles impact against her body as the surrounding liquid swirled and rapidly alternated in temperature between hot and cold. She took a moment to register where she was through the amber-hued glass tube before her. It was in the bowels of the mothership Solid White, deep inside the cloning facilities were her body had been fabricated seven years ago... or was it nine?

…But why am I back? Did the universe really do away with me and reincarnate me, in such a boring manner that I couldn’t remember? To many strange ideas and conclusions bounced around her head to count.

Her back felt all itchy and numb, but her limbs lacked the willpower to reach up and relieve the strange sensation. Were they tied down?... No, One-One only had to access her mindware to find that they were undergoing modifications, and she had consented to their deactivation some time earlier.

Still, her body felt so light and formless in its current state, seemingly devoid of all the metallic and mental burdens that her previous life had bestowed on her. Soon she gave up trying to move completely and simply allowed herself to drift in a state of zen, taking comfort in the fact she could hear nothing but the distant roar of the Solid White’s engines. It felt like sitting inside the mind of a sleeping god.

All too soon, a loud clunking noise shattered her silent drifting.

The pressure of the surrounding liquid seemed to change, and force her upwards through a hatch that hadn't been there a second earlier. Her eyes and ears burned for a moment as she bolted upward, and a small increment of panic ricocheted around her head, before she finally hit the surface.

It’s okay, I remember this. She reassured herself. The next room is a big flat place with lots of tubes on the floor, where they have a Type Three look at ya’ for defects.

She did not surface in a ‘big flat room’.

It wasn’t even ‘a room’. It was more like she accended from the depths of some swamp, directly into the kind of rainforests she had only seen in Cyberspace with her mindware. When her arms and legs suddenly began to react to her commands, she only then realised they were indeed organic rather than the bionics she had only just become accustomed to. Even her vital chest generator and lichens were missing, but instead of feeling ill her body felt, if anything, much lighter for it.

“Makes sense. They built me back in proper form.” Antibody One-One physically said out loud, as she pulled herself from the strangely non-cohesive mud, then eyed a neatly folded set of Nepleslian combat gear layed out on the swamp’s bank.

“Antibody! What do you think you’re doing!” Warmonger-Drill-Sargent Caspian hollered from several feet to the west, reinforced by a neatly ranked row of stocky recruits at his back. Before he even continued, she instinctively threw the suit on and attempted to make herself look presentable in the smallest amount of time imaginable. “Think you have all day to swim around and jump inbetween the metaphorical brains of unknowable galactic entities!? We got red planets to mash and neko ass to grass, girl! Now suit up, fall in and sound off like you got a pair!”

Despite the fact that she quite literally didn’t have a pair, she lined up on command and hollered her full title to the Drill-Sargent along with a corresponding “Sir.”

In no time at all they were in space, above the hazy brown-blue orb of a nameless planet. More to the point, the feeling of having her breath thrown back at her and the rather crude HUD forced before her eyes suggested she was inside a power armour. The attacking enemy were big, smooth, silver shapes resembling Yamati ships; but strangely flexible in a way that suggested they were really organic and more like weird space fish than… well, something that made sense.

The battle was going badly and her comrades yelled out rather corny death screams, like those normally uttered by the bad guy’s flunkies in bad Nepleslian action shows. Antibody One-One felt somewhat put off herself, only just about managing to avoid death several times and failing to land any blows of her own at all. Something crucial was missing, an innate power she suddenly didn’t have, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what.

One of the big silver fish-ships grabbed her in its teeth, and she felt her power armour violently compact around the waste as it tore through effortlessly. In a split second it explosively decompressed and opened up her naked body to the cold agony of empty space. The world began to spin, her heart convulsed and she allowed herself to drift away with open arms…

“SCARLET.” A powerful, all-consuming voice boomed out of nowhere. “YOUR DEBT. YOU STILL HOLD THIS DEBT. SCARLET.”

“…Ha… Yes, I do.” Her mouth responded in movements alone.

Scarlet’s skin grew numerous angular crimson stains, and her heart furiously roared back into life once more. It was a unimaginably painful sensation, but the will of the universe had demanded her servitude and she was nothing to argue against it.

As if her hands were the talons of some great bird, she dug them into the eyes of the great space fish. It physically winced, but only thrashed more furiously in it’s attempts to finish her off. Out of offensive limbs, Scarlet silently roared and dug into it with her-

…..

“One-One! Antibody One-One! Wake up already before you!-“ The distant voice of Stargazer Three-Nine commanded.

Scarlet groggily forced herself out of slumber, and awoke to the all-to-familiar stink of the transport of the shuttle, albeit with the added sensation of a completely alien taste in her mouth. She opened her eyes to find the side of a quite reasonably muscular forearm, belonging to the attached Nepleslian soldier, straining to get away from the grip of her jaws. He just glared at her speechlessly from his seat with a look of shock and confusion, as she removed her teeth slowly and pulled a coy, embarrassed smile that was totally unsuitable for her sharp facial features.

Spacecase One-Three had sat silently in his seat for as long as he had been on the transport itself, replaying training simulation after training simulation on the use of power armor. Bootcamp had been an ordeal but with access to Freespace training programs he had been able to go through with very little trouble. Still; violence was never his forte. He loved flying and working with computerized systems, but never before had he ever had a reason to fight. Still, after so many downloaded generations doing nothing but monotonous activity, he had felt the need for a change, and had signed up for the Nepleslian military. Whether that was a mistake or no was something that still stood to be seen.

The simulations were useful enough, but it soon became abundantly clear that One-Three would never be a first rate soldier; his skills with computers and all things that flew were unsurpassed, but if he ever needed to fight an opponent, he would have to rely on his wits rather than his skill. As he sat in his daydream state, as he had done for many hours, a sudden commotion broke him from his revelry.

His eyes opened, revealing a sight much odder than any he had ever seen before. A Spacer girl was sitting on her haunches, teeth sunk into the arm of a large, burly Nepleslian soldier. He terminated the program he had been running, and sat up in his jump seat, laughing like a hyena. "I thought kitties were suppose to scratch, not bite?"

Scarlet didn't seem to acknowledge the other Freespacer at first, being too busy patting down the confused Nepleslian bloke's arm, and then disappearing from view before she could do any more damage.

Yet, soon enough she noisily clambered into the seat on the other side of the white-haired fellow and pushed her nose right into his personal space. One could only guess that she crawled right under the seats, and now she had a really obnoxious look on her face to boot.

"...What is a... kitties?" She asked with both hands holding her black mane away from her face, as if the question itself didn't make her look dumb enough. Truth was she hadn't actually been planetside before, and had thus had never actually seen a cat or any animals at all. "...If your calling me a Neko... I don't think they bite-scratch at all, they mostly just shoot."

"-DOKKUUUN!" She mimed shooting a pistol, as if he didn't know what 'shoot' meant.

At the sound of the fake gunshot Fetch grabbed his chest and made a gurgling sound, mimicking the effect of being shot. A huge grin crossed his face and he lauged like a child at the effect of it all.

"A kitty is a feline...I have never seen one but the creatures are in the archives and I studied them one day. They have ears like those Neko creatures. They scratch...but I will call you kitty anyway. You can call me Fetch...pilot and computer artist extraordinare."

Fetch One-Three was not always so immature, but to be anything but was a rare occurence for him. He was mature when he needed to be; he had decades of experience as a pilot, being passed down from body to body. In those lives he had been in many situations where his and his crews life was at risk; those were times he was mature, but never else.

Scarlet dug back into her memories to try and remember what 'feline' meant, and it was only when the mental image of a cat was dug up from her pre-school VR training that she finally eased up a little. She sputtered out a little giggle and unconsciously rearranged her legs so that she was perched in a cat-like posture, whilst the idea of the ridiculous looking land mammal bounced around her head.

"...So that's why the Neps were calling the Neko-valky-jerias kitties! It's like a crazy clumsy animal!" She announced to herself like it was a leap of genius, completely forgetting that she had just been nick-named as one seconds earlier and what that implied. "...You're a smart one Mr.Fetch!"

It took a moment for the dream-fuel to run out, before she stopped gazing into the ceiling thoughtfully and looked back down to Fetch. By this point she was practically sitting on his armrest, and pulled his left hand over with her right bionic one so she could shake it. "They call me Scarlet, as in the colour! I'm an instrument of karma!"

The comment may have been turned into sugar-coated nonsense by her currently whimsical attitude, but 'instrument of karma' actually meant 'I've been trying to die gloriously in combat at every chance'. She may be immature, but as the numerous metal components on her body hinted at, any innocence in Scarlet's mind had long since gone.