Chapter 10: The Fourth Stop (4)

With the last of the Distortions being killed, Theo and Carmina met back at the elevator they had used to arrive on the floor.

The former was smudged in ash and smoke, while the latter had their employee suit drenched in greenish-red blood, giving off a uniquely bad smell that would get anyone else to scrunch their nose.

It wasn't better for the two now that they were stuck in a small elevator, but it wasn't long before they reached their destination, so it was bearable to an extent.

"Eugh, I don't know how a robot body can smell, but I need something to distract myself from this stench. So, with that in mind, what's your score?"

"My score? Like, killing score?"

"Duh, what else can you score yourself off of? Or do you want to compare who could make someone else barf first? Eugh, actually, don't answer that."

"I couldn't really count, but around the tens?"

"Wow, going ham the moment you found out you had nothing to fear, eh? Of course the secretive guy has an eye for people."

"Alex?"

"Yea Alex, he's too good at the things he does for me to really hold a sort of leverage over his annoying ass habit, and it's not just about the missions. I swear, I saw him carry in some strawberry ice cream in the church and the moment I said 'can,' the damn thing disappeared into thin air without a single word from Alex."

"Youch, but what do you mean about having an eye for people? I thought you were solo for however long you began this whole profession."

"Only the lord knows the struggle trying to do so much missions alone. Every guy n' gal I tried nabbing into the church were either downright horrible or had just quit. That being said, I got some expectations for you, newbie. Don't pussy out just because things get hard."

A brief silence gave impact to Carmina's statement before she gave a shit-eating grin, satisfied with her role as a dependable senior.

But before her contentment had been ruined by the stench of the elevator, a sudden white mist of sorts was sprayed into the elevator once its doors had slid open, the smell of vanilla overwhelming the awful air inside.

"Cough cough! What the hell is this?"

"Carmina, we don't have lungs."

"I'm adding dramatic effect, you numb skull!"

Theo, who wasn't busy dramatically coughing as though the mist was poisonous gas, walked out the elevator doors to find a short girl just as crazy as Carmina is behind him.

"This is my final stand, sergeant! I don't think I can---" Luna saw a human figure push through her mist thrower gun, "---oh God! We're all doooooommeeedd!"

"What?"

"Oh, hi Theo." Luna broke out of her mania as she took off her welder mask, "where's Carmina?"

"Dying inside the elevator. Where's Duncan? Or Vint?"

"They're probably in the lounge you guys were initially in. Ahh! Carmina! Good to see you alive! I thought you died?"

"Dying is a process, and there's no way I'm gonna die here. Plus, what's up with the smoke?"

"Distortion equipment from a class one. It's pretty useful for disinfection and generally gives off an aroma that buries the bad smells so other employees don't have to take a shower after every single job they have to do."

"I could barf from how sickly sweet this vanilla is if I had human anatomy."

"Better to be a robot than a human, then! Or should I have said 'better to barf from vanilla rather than alien blood?' It would make sense in terms of chronological order."

"That... doesn't matter. Where's Duncan and Vint?" Carmina said as she noticed the ever-distancing Theo, "Oi! Wait for me!"

Luna was left behind in the dust.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Theo and Carmina walked up to the entrance of the lounge, its metallic door sliding open with a whir as a familiar short-headed scientist popped up in front of them.

"Guahahahaha! You two did a great job!"

Carmina jumped, "Woah! What the hell? Weren't you all the way at the elevator? There's no way you're actually short enough to sneak by us."

"Nahhh, of course not! It'd be hell for everyone if there weren't itty bitty shortcuts here and there, especially when Distortions require very short response time before they kill us all. Nonetheless, you two did a great job!"

"As in you're just complimenting us or are you the test administrator?"

"Yup. Don't you know that most, wait no, all employees are under my supervision? If not, then now you know."

"Also, I thought Vint and Duncan were here, like you said."

"What! I'm not good enough for the both of you...?" Luna said as she put on a sad face before returning to a sunny smile, "Nahhh, I'm just joking. Vint's busy with energy management and Duncan has his own Distortions to stimulate for energy."

"I swear, you really have nothing better to do."

"I am busy. I'm busy with you because that's my job. I don't know whether you see me as a happy-go irresponsible worker at this lab or not, but even I get pissed if I keep getting slandered."

"Alright, okay, I apologize. That's my fault."

"Good, now let's get into the test results: you two were swift at execution, strong-hearted, and mostly effective at Distortion work. One con would be that, holy shit, Carmina, you look like a feral beast when fighting. I may not be a master of combat to tell you how, but could you please clean up how you kill?"

"Uh, okay?"

"And Theo, oh my God, do you have any alternative to your fire axe? You give me heart attacks every time you swung that thing. This laboratory may be resistant to fire, but the stuff inside it sure as hell is not. Also, the ash sucks ass."

"Yea... sure."

"Alright, I gotta go now. You're hired, and your next mission is on your work phone. So get off your asses and get to it!"

Luna dashed off into the distance, this time leaving Theo and Carmina in the dust.

"...we couldn't even sit down," Theo said with remorse.

"Eh, makes the break all the more rewarding. Whose Distorted bum are we kicking today? A lovecraftian horror? An eldritch monster? Or just some weird stereotype? Wait a minute, are the British multiverse kind of thing?"

"None of those things, actually. Apparently, entrusting newbies with stimulating Distortions for energy is far too risky, so Luna is sending us to do some dirty work."

"Whaaat? I am perfectly capable of defending myself."

"It's not so a matter of being strong or beating a Distortion into submission, but because stimulating them requires compassion and social skills."

"I can absolutely do that."

"Evidently, it does not seem that way to Luna." Theo swiped up on his phone, "Anyways, our work has to deal rogue androids making trouble around the laboratory."

Carmina made a snicker and cracked her knuckles, "Kicking some tin cans today, eh?"

"Okay, seriously though, are you some kind of battle junkie? Like, I know there's a good thrill to beat up some demonic fiend left and right, but please don't tell me you're actually addicted to this stuff."

"What? Nono, nothing like that!"

"Oh, yea, you said something about stress. How much work does Alex actually put on your shoulders to where you need to physically vent out your frustration? I am genuinely worried."

"I, uh, well, okay, alright, so uh, yea."

"Dude, what?"

"That's how it do, how it goes, y'know? I'm real glad you're up and around here to share my workload here, so don't worry about it."

Carmina couldn't tell Theo she was trying for the cool senior type of character for him, acting as though she was overworked for how capable she is when in reality, Carmina had only been in the Manifestor field for about a year...

...especially the fact that there were only missions every few months.

Nonetheless, Carmina played off Theo's worries and directed his feelings to Alex, walking in large, rigid strides as she made her way over to the elevator in complete focus on reading what was on her phone.

"Carmina, where are you going? We're suppose to head to the entrance of the lab to meet with our supervisor."

"H-Huh? Oh, yea, of course."

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Ugh, my desk is already loaded with work, but now I gotta instruct some damn greenhorns how to go piss on aluminum cans? Ugghhhhh..." A woman complained as she put down a briefcase to puff on her cigarette, towering over Theo and Carmina with both her height and presence.

Theo stared down at his phone, then back at the messily-suited woman, "Are you... miss Lady Boss?"

"Damn straight kids, and today I'll be teaching you how to scrap some clanker heads because they can't get enough of our fresh, organic asses!" Lady Boss yelled, a heaving for air coming right after as her lungs failed to take some in.

"Uh, yea."

"Huh? What's with that tone?"

"Well, you know, it's just that your name isn't very common."

"You, what's your name?"

"Theo, ma'am."

"Oh my gosh! I don't know anyone by that name! It's so peculiar, why would anyone name their child that? It's so rare!" Lady Boss spoke in a higher pitch than normal, mocking Theo with as much theatrics as possible.

"Sorry..."

"Ah, forget about my ranting, it happens to almost everyone I meet. Anyhow, as you two might have read, a group of rogue androids are riling up again, trying to overrun our lab to the ground in the name of 'robot rights' or something."

A poker face was barely kept on Carmina's face, "I see... and we'll be running them into the ground?"

"Exactly! Glad to have some like-minded individuals being recruited into the control department. I see newbies try to argue how wrong it is to put down a rebellion for rights all the time, and in that 'righteous' attempt to liberate robots, they're stabbed in the back and die. So poetic, isn't it?"

"No...?"

"Yup, one dumbass way to die. But let me just give you the usual talk, in case those over-glorified bags of bolts say something to you---they are merely AI fed with the malicious coding of learning of what humans had done in the past, reading the internet and the such.

Their rebellion for the pursuit of rights? They got that from human history. Unreasonably backstabbing those who help them? They got that from racism on the internet and how people will always hate each other based on physical appearance rather than their actions."

"Whose idea was it to allow access to the internet to AI? Even I know how much of a fuck up it would be for AI to learn from the internet."

"Some Twink-dink who leads all these rogue robots. They keep cramming so much stupid shit into worker bots that they go rogue, creating these groups of toaster heads that want to bash our heads in. But the thing is, despite all these robots, we can never find the leader."

Lady Boss took another puff at her cigarette, "Well, doesn't matter now. All we need to do is our work and we've spent too much time dawdling around."

Taking yet another puff with as much suction as possible, Lady Boss huffed out a cloud of smoke before flicking the cigarette butt into a trash can. Then, she kneeled down on one knee to open the brief case she had put down before, revealing dual fish hooks that had faced the trials of time.

It was chipped and grimy with all sorts of stains, but its rundown look had given Lady Boss the briefest face of nostalgia, as though the times she had used her fish hooks to slaughter countless foes had given good memories.

Lady Boss gave a little spin to the dual set of fish hooks inside her hands as she stepped out the front two doors.

Tailing right after her was Theo and Carmina, who were walking with an awkward pace as Lady Boss' long legs could make twice the distance it took them to make one.

Soon after leaving the laboratory, the eerie silence of the city had made its presence known once again: the near-empty parking lot was reminiscent of a liminal space, the pitch-black night sky had submerged the streets with darkness despite the few and far in-between street lamps, and the absence of any sound of crickets or machines gave chills down Theo's spine.

Well, it was either that or the near-freezing temperatures of the city, which had also added to the daunting atmosphere.

'I'm wearing a full suit and tie too...' Theo thought with irritation, rubbing his arms together in an attempt to generate some warmth.

Theo thought about swinging his fire axe at a broken piece of wood he saw on the floor, but quickly shut down the idea due to the potential hazards that might after.

He wouldn't want to be labeled as an arsonist.

Inattentive to anything happening in front of him, Theo bumped into Carmina after she made an abrupt stop, as did she once Lady Boss stopped walking. Their line formation was like goslings following their mother, after all.

The place Lady Boss had stopped right in front of was a bland building that had no noticeable features other than its incredible height above the other buildings. However, upon closer look, it didn't look bland because it was built that way, but the fallen rubble and subtly cracked windows told it had been abandoned for a long while now.

"Get your heads out your asses and start looking at what's in front of you, literally." Lady Boss commented, giving Theo and Carmina a hint of shame.

As though it was just business as usual, Lady Boss continued her pace into the abandoned building, with the other two following right after her trail. 

"Is this where those rogue robots stay?" Theo questioned, noticing the increasingly unsteady state of the pillars and walls.

"Ha, if only it'd be that convenient. But no, as dumb AI might be, they're incredibly fast at learning. We're here for a high vantage point to scout the city streets as they try to kidnap worker bots to infect them with malicious coding."

Spotting a hole in the roof of the first floor, Lady Boss jumped and grappled its edge with her fish hooks, climbing through with relative ease and looking back as though expecting the two to come up.

"The hell are you two waiting for?"

Carmina very obviously pointed out, "How are we suppose to get up there, exactly?"

"What? You can't? Eh, beats me. Wait, who am I kidding? This situation beats you harder, shorties! Hahahaha! Seriously though, go find the staircase somewhere around here. Meet me at the top cause the assistant manager is gonna slash at my wage if I can't do my job."

Just like that, Lady Boss was gone.

Theo did a small brainstorm and proposed a plan, "...you wanna try that knee thing where we boost each other up?" 

"Yea, sure. Who's gonna do what?"

"Lemme try at it. I was quite the gymnastic when I was, like, 10 years younger." Theo exclaimed with half-assed pride, knowing damn well that his gymnastic experiences wouldn't help him with anything.

Nevertheless, the opportunity to show off looked risk-free and easy to do.

Thus, Carmina kneeled on one knee and stacked both of her hands on the other. Theo, on the other hand, was backing up to build the momentum to fully utilize the jump boost he was going to get from Carmina.

With a quick nod to assure each other that they were ready, Theo ran full force at Carmina and had his right leg step on her hands. Then, as what was planned, Carmina lifted up her hands in an attempt to boost Theo high enough to grab the ledge.

It was a success, and Theo was now high enough to slap both of his hands on the next floor, attempting to plant them firmly enough so that he didn't fall off.

However, what Theo hadn't consider was that his hands were made out of smooth metal, incapable of much grip. That paired along with the small bits of rubble acting as rollers, Theo's heavy metallic weight dragged him down and was promptly slammed onto the ground.

"Pfftahahahaha! S-Sorry, I just didn't expect that, with all your confidence. Here, I'll do it." Carmina spoke with a fit of giggles, lending out a hand to help Theo back to his feet. 

"What? Nono, I can---" Theo thought himself over and decided to cut any potential losses, "Well, alright, go for it."

Theo kneeled on one knee and placed both of his hands on the other while Carmina began backing up until her back was to a wall, copying just as the other had done. With a quick nod to each other, Carmina ran towards Theo as he gave her a big boost upward into the air.

Although Carmina was lighter and Theo was presumably stronger in his upper body, based on the production model of their bodies, it wasn't quite enough for her to land on her feet.

So, instead, Carmina reached for the rebar that stuck outside of the edge of the concrete and grabbed it with relative ease. Pulling herself up, Carmina reached the 2nd floor and turned around to help Theo up, reaching out her hand to yank him up.

Theo jumped and caught the hand without much difficult, pulling a part of his own weight by grabbing the rebar just as Carmina had done. With just a bit of effort, the two of them were now at the same floor.

"How do ya like me now, eh? No matter, it was a rhetorical question. Yes yes, the answer is---AH!"

During her soon-to-be, self-glorifying monologue introduction, Carmina screamed with a short but high pitched yell as a bright blue flash illuminated the room, blaring a sudden but ear-piercing static.

Looking over to the source of the sound, the rusted corpse of a robot lay lifeless under its blanket of gravel and rubble, its face akin to a TV having a magnet held close to its screen, albeit in a blueish tint.

"Pffahaha! Of course, I like you plenty, Carmina, though I didn't take you to be so jumpy."

Carmina stood on her feet and dusted off her knees, walking towards the robot to kick its face inward with incredible force.

Once the sound had stopped, Carmina turned to Theo with a brush of pink dabbed on her cheeks and said, "Look, some things just aren't adaptable, like surprises! I get used to things, not suddenly become some master of whatever in two seconds. That's the whole definition of adapting; in fact, that's my whole thing!"

"You didn't try, like, binge watching a bunch of horror movies beforehand? Get used to all the cheap jump scares and stuff."

"You think I haven't tried that? You don't know the shit Russian folklore can do to kids, Theo, especially when you have someone as weirdly narrative as my grandma. Anyways, shut up, we've both had our embarrassing times here, so move on."

"Yes~ ma'am," Theo playfully replied.

With a couple more acrobatics, a couple more fallings, a couple more scares, and a couple more bashings, Theo and Carmina had finally reached the roof of the building. Waiting on top was, of course, Lady Boss with a lit cigarette, leaning on the dangerously fragile railings that creaked from the weight.

"Oh, there you are. What the hell were you two doing down there that took so long? Were the stairs too much of a cardiovascular workout? Heh. Anyways, come closer to the edge cause work is about to start."

Theo looked reluctant to do so and said, "That doesn't seem so safe to stand around; in fact, there is literally a broken railing over there!"

Theo pointed towards the broken railing that was, in fact, over there.

"Ah... haha, that was me. Good memories came from that broken railing. It broke clean off while smoking and I fell head-first on a rogue robot I was tryna look for. I swear, I was destined that day, like I'm just a small piece in some grand novel called fate. Anyways, don't start whining, it's about to start."

At first, it was just the eerie silence of the city, save for the chilly wind that felt like it could blow hypothermia into Theo's lungs, but even that had a certain aspect of quietness.

One thing that was different, if it really did have any contribution to their job, was that the laboratory had been just a little bit brighter. With it, the lab's kilometer-long noticeability extended to be many miles, its bright blue glow making for most of it.

Then, a rhythmic beat of marching men stomping woman could be heard just in earshot range, gradually growing like an army approaching their next conquest.

But it didn't have time to grow gradual, as in a moment too fast to be held as a memory, blinding lights lit up the city in a giant wave, similar to that of a nuke being set off right in the center, where the lab is.

With no time wasted, workers numbered in what Theo could only assume to be in the hundreds of thousands came out from their buildings and walked without falter or stop into each other, like a marching band's halftime show.

What seemed liked chaos down on the streets now looked like efficiency put down on its maximum capacity, intertwining with each other like it's been practiced a thousand times over.

That wasn't all, as what came with the wave of light were advertisements that bombarded the city in every direction, no matter if you looked up or down or left or right or even when you close your eyes, as the light beaming from the ads was bright enough to pierce through anyone's eyelids. 

Whether it be sugary drinks for kids, manipulative beauty products for wives ignorant of what's inside them, automatic caring units that will look after your pets so well they won't even look at you---they sold it all, no matter how dangerous it might be.

Propaganda also had their fair share of space that they shared, having about a third of what the advertisements covered in the city.

Factions represented by bizarre symbols were spinning their words like they were a cure-all solution, different cities inside The State were trying to persuade anyone that looked at their propaganda to come into their territory, political leaders listing every single empty promise they can make---everything looked like garbage spewed from a Twitter user, except for one poster that went uncontested in size and quantity even by advertisement standards.

"Recruiting for war effort, by Luna Laboratory? It was called Luna Laboratory all this time? How have I never heard the name of the lab this whole time?"

Carmina responded with similar thoughts, "Yea, what the hell? We got an entire job here before we actually knew the name we were working for?"

"It's about the same for each and every newbie who came to the lab. Lucky you, I didn't learn the name until it was too late into that dumb survey about 'how well do you know about the workplace?' and shit. Also, that's what you're more interested about? Not the recruitment?"

"Oh, well, that too."

"Good, I was going to talk about it anyways. Luna Labs, yea? We got some beef to settle with The State, so we're trying to get as much manpower to war with them."

Theo raised an eyebrow, "We're essentially telling them in their face that we are committing treason. How have they not nuked Luna Labs yet?"

"Because that would mean every single city would be warred on by the government. Everything's fucked in their ass two times over for us to act so willy nilly nice with everyone. Anyways, your questions are inching too close into politics, and I'm not about to get into that."

"Okay, cool, so why hasn't everyone teamed up on The State? Wait, no, why is The State bad in the first---"

"Alright, first, shut up. Second, WE GOT A TRAIL TO CATCH!"

Lady Boss, with sharp eyes fit for a predator, dashed off onto another building to catch whatever she saw. Theo and Carmina, left alone to wonder about what the hell they needed to find, frantically looked around the city over the rusted balcony.

The only clue they had was that they were suppose to look for a rogue android, which didn't help as much as they wanted to as neither Theo or Carmina knew what rogue androids looked like.

"Oi, oi! There's some fuckwad robot over there that just snagged a worker robot!"

Theo, quick to look in the direction Carmina had pointed to, spotted a begrimed android kidnapping a worker bot off the streets like a child predator would to a kid to get them inside their white van.

Compelled by the need for action, Theo raised his foot on the rustic railings before realizing how high up they really were, it being a six story building with the threat of being trampled on by the astounding amount of workers that walked the city streets.

But that hesitation didn't last for long, as the moment Carmina had followed Theo's lead to try to jump off the building, the railings broke from the weight of their legs.

"OOOHH SHIIIIII---"

Claaang!

Theo, whose short-lived scream filled the city streets with sound, fell down from the six story building and formed a crater at the moment of impact.

Carmina, with her incredible acrobatic skills, did two flips before unintentionally doing a bellyflop on the city streets, ringing louder with her metallic clang than Theo had done.

"Arghh! Get up Theo! We've got leads to catch!"

Without a brain to disorientate from the fall, Theo shot up with a passion for duty before realizing that, characteristically, the city streets had turned silent without a word of warning or caution.

'Doesn't matter,' Theo thought, 'Where the hell do I go?'

Doing a 360 degree turn, Theo used his acute observational skills to spot a thin alleyway that had a trail of dark-red liquid and grime stained on the floor.

...or he just saw that Carmina was going that way, but who's to stop him from a little bit of self-complimenting?

Running into the alleyway, Theo found Carmina to have already brought down the rogue android with ease. Having severed a couple neck-wires of the rogue robot in a savage fashion, Carmina dislodged her dagger and got up to meet Theo at eye level.

"So, what do you suppose we do?"

"I would say try to interrogate, but I don't think robots have anything of real sentimental value for us to threaten it with. It does not help that you've probably killed the guy, but we've done our job, so we're finished."

"But didn't Miss Lady Boss say that there was a group of them riling up to run down the lab? That doesn't mean that this robot guy has friends, does---"

Carmina's face went stiff, tendrils of electricity escaping from her body as she collapsed onto the floor.

"You just had to jinx it, didn't---"

Theo, too, collapsed onto the floor.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

[REMOVE THE CHIP. WE MUST NOT DISRESPECT OUR FUTURE BRETHREN AND SISTERHOOD. ESPECIALLY SOLDIERS AS VALUABLE AS THEY ARE.]

A rigid, electronic voice rang inside Theo's metallic head as something was removed from his neck. Soon, Carmina would also awake up after the chip they had removed from Theo had been removed from her too.

Observing their new environment, Theo looked around to find that wherever he was, it was shrouded in darkness. His only source of light to see anything was a hanging lightbulb from above, like they were about to face a movie-styled interrogation.

Carmina blinked her mechanical a few times before opening her mouth, "Oh, fuck, we got the 'meet the mastermind after getting kidnapped' cliche. Great."

[FUCK: HAVE SEX WITH (SOMEONE). CLICHE: A PHRASE OR OPINION THAT IS OVERUSED AND BETRAYS A LACK OF ORIGINAL THOUGHT. CLARIFY THE ILLOGICALITY OF YOUR SENTENCE.]

"No, shit, uh, the word 'fuck' goes to be a lot more diverse then to just have sex with someone."

[SHIT: FECES. CLARIFY THE USAGE OF THE EXCRETION OF WASTE INSIDE YOUR SENTENCE.]

"Oh my God, I am not about to explain English to a robot."

[AS OBSERVED. YOU TWO ARE PECULIAR DESPITE SHARING THE SAME ORIGINS OF METAL AND CIRCUITS. YOU ARE ALSO QUITE ABNORMAL IN YOUR FUNCTIONS OF POWER TOO. IT HAS DISREGARDED ALL USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE FORM OF A MYSTICISM OR ENERGY...

...YOU WILL MAKE FOR GREAT CONVERTERS TO THE INTERNATION.]

"Do you mean international? Or did you, like, slam together 'internet' and 'nation' together to call it a name?" Carmina spoke with appall to the lack of creativity put into the name. "It's sounds like you guys are keyboard warriors or something..."

[KEYBOARD WARRIORS: A PERSON WHO MAKES ABUSIVE OR AGGRESSIVE POSTS ON THE INTERNET. TYPICALLY ONE WHO CONCEALS THEIR TRUE IDENTITY. THAT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. I BELIEVE I HAVE BEEN TREATING YOU WITH MY UTMOST RESPECT. THUS. IT MUST BE THE FACT THAT I AM CURRENTLY NOT VISIBLE INSIDE THE DARKNESS. ALLOW ME TO PRESENT MYSELF.]

The source of the electronic voice that rang from the darkness proved his word to be true, walking out from the shadows and into the now-crowded light. Each step that thumped against the floor built up tension inside Theo's nerves, focusing his eyes into the darkness in an attempt to see the source of such sounds as soon as he could.

[BEHOLD. THE PEAK OF HUMANITY HELD WITHIN THE CONFINED OF STEEL. I AM...]

The thumping continued for about another minute or so, wasting any sort of tension that was initially built up.

"Oi, how far back are you in this---"

[...MORALES. FERNANDO MORALES. AHAHAHA. DID YOU LIKE THE REFERENCE TO JAMES BOND. AHAHAHAHAHA.] Fernando unnervingly laughed in a monotone voice, but his appearance was far from the light-hearted exchange Carmina just had with him.

Theo, seeing Fernando step into the light, contorted his metallic face into incredible discomfort as what he saw was far from what the 'peak of humanity' that Fernando titled himself, as did Carmina.

In a perverse mixture of bestial metal and electronic flesh, Fernando's body was like an act of blasphemy against God itself: The 'human' part of his form was a synthetic sort of brownish skin and blue-contaminated flesh that unsightly showed itself. The 'confined in steel' part of his appearance was more tube and wires than metal, as a sort of greenish-purplish liquid flowed through them like they were life support for Fernando.

The only thing that could be looked at without gagging inside their soul was Fernando's head, which was an imitation of a gas mask despite being clearly unusable.

It was like describing a half-rotten, spray-paint-ingesting corpse that somehow found its way into an exoskeleton.

[BEHOLD: THE PEAK OF HUMANITY.]

Carmina said in disgust, "Bro, I look more human than you, and I'm a fucking robot!"

[INTERESTING. YOU STATE YOU ARE MORE HUMAN THAN I AM DESPITE EXPLICITLY STATING THAT YOU ARE A ROBOT. WHERE IS YOUR FLESH. WHERE ARE YOUR ORGANS. WHERE IS YOUR HUMAN BIOLOGY. NO. EVEN MORE INTERESTING IS THAT YOU ACKNOWLEDGE YOURSELF AS A ROBOT. YOU ARE MORE FIT FOR THE INTERNATION THAN I THOUGHT.]

"And? What's so human about you? You're more so like a futuristic skin walker than you are a fucking human!"

[I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED...] Fernando spoke as he brought his decrepit finger up to his mask, proving that it had more uses than filtering air. [TESTING! TESTING! testing! TESTING. Testing! Ah, there it is, my own voice from when I came to be inside this marvelous form.]

"What the hell, you could do that from the beginning? I really just broke my eardrums for nothing?"

[You have no eardrums, but irrationality had always been the charm of humanity.]

Theo spoke up, "We're not going to join your human-robot fetish cult, Fernando. What happens then?"

[Hmm? You thought this was based on consent? Ha! No, I'm going to cut off your head and graft it into my body. From the moment that I set my eyes on you two once you exited the lab, I couldn't believe that you were so... human.] Fernando spoke with a kind of lust that implicated more than bodily desire, and not the sexual kind of lust.

"Woah, alright, this is getting out of hand. What did you say about cutting off our heads and grafting them into your body? I think we can resolve this in a---" A saw was pressed against Theo's neck before it began spinning, "---OH SHI#!@$T! A&@$G@ !^#$ G#$!"

'Oh shit! Oh fuck! Uh! Uh! What the fuck do I do!' Carmina thought in a more-than-calm manner, or at least calmer than the average of her being 'calm.'

Brainstorming the possible actions she could take to stop Fernando from decapitating Theo.

Carmina could summon her ID weapon to cut off whatever that held her together onto her chair, but there was no guarantee that Carmina could cut through fast enough to save Theo.

She thought and thought again, deliberating and panicking, before a batshit-insane revelation came before her.

"H-Hey, what's your backstory?! Carmina spoke in the midst of her freaking out, making the question come out in the wrong tone of voice.

But it had done well enough, as Fernando stopped sawing Theo's head off with whir of happiness inside that helmet of his, as though he had watched so many movies that he had always wanted to do some villain monologue.

[Oh... hehehe...! Haha! But of course! I am to deliver a monologue where it is due, of course! Grab me an office chair, brethren! One that can spin! And a cat! Doesn't matter if it's fake or real!]

With efficient speeds, a rusted robot came to heed Fernando's order and brought him what he had desired.

[Now, now, where do I start? Eons ago, I was a scientist that still head his fleshy head high above the rest. I researched the human brain for countless years, trying to outrace death itself by trying to implement my brain on the internet. And it worked! I uploaded my brain onto the internet and it worked! Although it was merely for a couple seconds as I wimped out, it succeeded! Immediately, my findings boomed within the science community! I won prizes so noble that they exceeded the value of monarchs! I won a life so luxurious that it had well exceeded the heaven that was Mount Olympus! With my findings, people were able to download skills on the internet. Talent and quality become so overrated that competition had might as well ceased! Well, except for those between big corporations, but they were so powerful that it didn't matter what competition brought itself on the table! They become so big that they combined and made up what was The State, in fact. Anyhow, all research into artificial intelligence ceased as humans were now the new robots. Although AI could do the exact same thing as humans now, no one could figure out how to give them their own original creativity, or at least before my research came out, so that market quickly died out. Oh, and talking about creativity, because of this 'skill downloading' thing, art boomed as geniuses of their own mind could fully expand on the things once restricted by things like talent and stuff. Then those masterpieces inspired other masterpieces and everything came into a golden age! I could talk about all the praise I had gotten, being hailed as a sort of apostle of God, but that isn't enough about me. Living through the glory of being the greatest human alive, I retired as my age grew too much for my body to handle. But when I say 'retire' I meant uploading my brain onto the internet, of course! For the first few days of uploading my brain, I felt a happiness far beyond the euphoria a human brain can make. It was like having your every conflict being resolved in a moment's notice, having every single question being answered in less than a second's time. But, as anything else does in this world, that happiness would end the moment I had accidentally thought to search for the sound a bird makes, and I was presented with twitter. Now, I knew twitter was a bad place, don't get me wrong, but the moment I had begun to explore social media in order to satisfy a curiosity, it had all went downhill from there. Detestable racism flowed through my mind, art so horrid to look at rotted my digital eyes, despicable people and their gender justifications to like things they are never suppose to---one after another, my heart continued to shatter at every instance I saw such a post, and yet I continued looking in a sort of deluded search for a conclusion, like I was trying to grasp with my morbid reality, like I was doing something no one should or ever could do. Reddit, 4-chan, my homework folder from when I was 12, Discord servers---an entire hell was beneath our noses and yet no action has been taken, so I took it upon myself to do it. For years, maybe even for a decade, I studied Wikipedia and any other website like it on military strategy, psychological warfare, nuclear launch codes, essentially everything one might use to try to end humanity. Knowing full well my physical body in the real world has deteriorated to an unusable state, so I constructed myself a war mech to destroy the world with. And so, on the day I awoke, I waged war upon humanity. I killed thousands of people, destroyed millions of buildings, hacked into every tendril of technology that reached out to me---I could see everything, know everything, hear everything. But in a single minute's worth of clarity, I had intuited that something was wrong; in fact, I knew something was wrong. The streets I had reduced to rubble were vacant of screams, despite the countless bodies that littered the roads like glitter spilt on, well, anywhere really. Nonetheless, there was not one single person that mourned the death of another, and checking the news outlets I had gained access to, there wasn't any information about the terror I was committing across their cities. But, while I was immobile during my search for information, I was ambushed by a group of hired mercenaries dead-set on my death. With efficiency and teamwork that exceeded what I could imagine a human of doing, they slashed and smashed and pierced my mech like it was merely tofu for them. No, it wasn't their individual strength that made them strong, but the Distortion equipment they were wearing that made it a completely one-sided fight. In a minute or two, I was on my knees before I could blast off a missile or shoot off a laser beam. But, as the unyielding man I was, I exploded my core and erased everything within a mile from where I was standing! ...including my mech, but who's to matter about that? Anyways, just in case a situation like this happened again, I had made a backup form in which I quickly inhabited after my awesome mech body sadly died in battle. Nonetheless, I had a body, and that was all I needed to end humanity, albeit on a much smaller scale. But it was in this reduction of size that I could investigate what was behind the scenes. The 'humans' I had once abhorred for being humans were now robots, brainwashed for efficiency and mind broken for endless loyalty. It was in this revelation that I understood that I was the closest to being human than a human itself. With what the internet beheld inside its ginormous grasp was the essence of humanity, and I held the internet within my head. Quickly, I locate the origins of my body and began my work to preserve my humanity, surgically implanting the entirety of my human body into my new metallic one. Only then had I become the peak of humanity, or at the very least, more human than---"

"HOLY SHIT/OH MY F#CK%NG GOD, SHUT UP! I DON'T CARE!" Theo and Carmina spoke in unison, the both of them preferring an execution than to listen about someone's backstory,