A little bit more. Trying to finish quickly.
We have Vivio/Copy-Cathy just trying to get over it.
Ford and Jet.....
More catgirls.
Then Quattro pushes Jet's button... and Jet looses her temper.(Which eventually leads to Jet taking time off for the Highway Star). Hopefully it doesn't come across as stupid.
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
We have Vivio/Copy-Cathy just trying to get over it.
Ford and Jet.....
More catgirls.
Then Quattro pushes Jet's button... and Jet looses her temper.(Which eventually leads to Jet taking time off for the Highway Star). Hopefully it doesn't come across as stupid.
Quote:She had still trouble believing she had survived this insanity. She’d survived without being mind-wiped by that madgirl like an unneeded computer disk. If Ford or... the thought died in her mind.________________________________
How insane was it to see yourself walk through a door, to see yourself standing right there and now. She forced herself not to throw up. She wasn’t Cathy anymore. She wasn’t ever Cathy.
She found herself trying not to start crying all over again.
If Ford or Cathy had not received her distress call and decided to come here, she would have been long gone when the Kuenstlers arrived. She would’ve an empty shell sitting in a tube, without even the sense to wonder who or what she was.
How often had she awoken in this tube, not knowing what had happening before ? How many times had Quattro overwritten her? How many times had she figured it out and just been wiped all over?
Her throat was still hoarse.
She’d watched the whole fight. Her own.... Cathy’s own trainers on Venus would’ve laughed at Quattro. It was obvious she had no combat training. Watching Quattro wear them down had made her sink to despair. She’d have the chance to watch herself die, scant minutes before she felt herself get erased.
Cathy rescued her from the tube. Cathy held her when she fell out. Cathy reassured her that everything would be okay.
She then told Cathy exactly what had happened to her and Cathy just held her. Quattro screamed, as Jet wrenched her arm while cuffing her. Oops.
The adrenaline rush began to fade. She began to shake. She began to feel tired, so went to sleep in her familiar bed on the Stargazer. She began to wonder, she began to hope that when she woke up, it’d be all just a nightmare.
----
Jet and Ford were in the bar.... what had been the bar... helping themselves. Nehallenia was a hive of activity again, groups of the local Senshi being marched to transport aircraft, while others were being dealt with locally.
It was a mess dealing with them all, but Jet was thankful it wasn’t her mess. Such was the benefit of command delegation. Some called it a fluid command style that encouraged personal initiative and allowed people who actually knew their jobs to take care of things. Jet personally would put it down to her own desire to avoid doing the work herself.
It meant keeping one eye on the information flowing to make sure things were going as planned. Keeping the big picture clear was hard enough even with software assistance. Two C-130’s worth of prisoners were already gone. Nova was in the landing bay being loaded, and repaired. Quattro had been taken care of. Cathy was taking care of Vivio personally, for obvious reasons.
Sato was gone. Just a few isolated pockets of resistance, most of which just gave up. Any casualties had been removed. All was well. She got sick of using the damned wristcom after about ten minutes, and decided it was worth the risk to switch back to her internal systems. It was worth it for the sheer convenience.
Operation successful. Hardware secured and on its way to Mars, then on from there for analysis. There was a request from Cathy to be dealt with; Jet saw to that with a few moment’s thought and a quick message.
Ford was busy fiddling with her damaged arm, and trying her damnedest not to pay attention to the blood on Jets body. Take a shower god damn it, it’s disturbing.
“I still don’t believe it,” she said, taking a sip from the same bottle of generic yellow carbonated alcoholic beverage she’d been nursing for the last hour. “A copy. Not a perfect one, but enough to believe she really was Cathy.”
Jet looked at her, then looked at her own reflection, distorted in the bubbling surface of her own drink. Iridescent traces of wavium swirled and chased each other around solar systems formed from bubble stars and planets. It was her daily dose, and while cooling off with Ford was as good a time as any.
“This is.... frightening stuff,” Ford continued.
“Yup,” said Jet. “Depends on what the analysis turns up, if it’s just a one-shot wave effect, or if it’s something reproducible. If it’s something that can be reproduced....”
Jet didn’t finish. Jet wasn’t quite sure how to finish. Mucking around with memories was GiTS stuff, but a totally independent copy capable of being placed in a totally separate body was getting into true Transhuman Space territory.
It occurred to her that if it had come from singinst it might even have been lauded as a true breakthrough. But it didn’t... it came from a Boskone madgirl’s lab, and the only thing Jet could think about was how dangerous it had been in the wrong hands.
“You want to destroy it all?”
“I honestly don’t know yet,” Thermiting it all and throwing the remains into the sun sure wouldn’t stop someone else from inventing it again sometime in the future. And it wasn’t a decision she had a right to make on her own. “It’s on a secure flight to Mars anyway. With Quattro secure on the Nova and going to meet her grandparents, that’s the safest place for it all for the time being.”
“My truck loaded up yet?”
Jet checkered her planner.
“Yea. Upper cargo deck,”
With half the Gruppe going with Quattro’s lab, there was plenty of space left.
“Great, I can get it fixed on the way.”
Another silence followed. Jet finished her drink in one go feeling a light tingle tickle through her body. She relaxed just a little bit. With a deliberately gentleness, she raised her right arm, brushing her fingers against Ford’s cheek.
“I’m glad you’re alright,” she said, wearing a soft smile. “I was really worried,”
Ford smiled at her. “I can look after myself, y’know?”
“I know. But...” And Jet was stuck. Sensing her trouble, someone fired a message at her demanding her presence elsewhere on the asteroid. The main servers were taken out of the control centre. Nehallenia was being picked apart for evidence. “Sorry, duty calls,”
As usual.
----
Cathy was looking out of the window of the transport ship Great Justice had sent with Taskforce Butterscotch, taking the chance to relax for the first time after Ford and her fight with Quattro.
It had been a close-run thing, much too close to be comfortable with it. A little bit worse timing here, a little bit less luck there and they might have been all killed, long before help would have arrived. Or maybe even worse.
What Quattro had done during the fight, what she had done before to her own catgirl, what she could have done to all of them with a little bit more time was more horrible than Cathy wanted to think about at the moment.
But the mission had ended well. It hadn’t been a perfect result, but it was good enough. They had accomplished all primary mission goals, it wasn’t that important that Sato had escaped before Butterscotch had blocked off traffic from Nehallenia.
“Someone will get her at a later time. She is not really a Boskonian, she will make mistakes” she whispered to herself, gently stroking Vivio’s neck at the same time.
The other catgirl was sleeping with her head on Cathys lap, her tail still twitching back and forth. It had taking Cathy many hours to calm down Vivio enough to learn what had happened while the forces of Butterscoth and the Panzerkuenstlers had secured the asteroid base and arrested all inhabitants.
The thought about learning that you were not the person you believed you were was disturbing. Whatever Vivios personality had been before their mission to Nehallenia, it was gone. Replaced with something Cathy had believed to be unique in Fenspace and on Earth. Quattro had ripped down the protective wall around this assumption.
But now the Madgirl was gone, she had left Nehalennia in the Nova. She would not hurt anyone for a long time, others would make sure of this. Her lab had been disassembled to look at everything later, but Cathy had already filed a request that if the copy of her was still inside the computer, it would be erased permanently.
But if this technology was possible, there was no guarantee that someone else would not reinvent it. Maybe Agatha Clay even had a copy of Quattros tech, or at least some blueprints how it worked. They could not just destroy it and bury the mission report under lots of paper, they needed to prepare for the next time.
If it was possible to attack an organic brain like this, there had to be ways to detect it... ways to defend against it. It was too horrible to believe there wasn’t one. There was a lot of work to do, and they had to begin with it quickly. Maybe she could ask the Panzerkuenstlers how they detected the memory manipulation to check if the procedure could work on an uncybered brain too.
Vivio awoke, still shivering. She slowly sat up. Cathy put her arm around her and drew Vivio towards her.
“Its all right, she is not here anymore... she will be locked up for a long time, she cannot hurt you anymore” she whispered. Knowing how another person thought and what that person liked or not liked had advantages.
Vivio sighed and nodded slowly. “It was just another nightmare. I will be okay in a few days.” He leaned against Cathy and shivered again. “I dreamed I just woke up in Quattros tube... again.”
“I will stay here, so you don’t wake up alone... and I think you got a bit of sleep this time, you really need it.” She wasn’t surprised at all that Vivio found it hard to sleep after her time with the Madgirl. “We will leave the station in a few hours, and I don’t think anyone of us will ever need to get back here.”
“But what will happen afterwards? The only place I remember is somehow... already occupied? Its not much better for the other catgirls, most of them remember a few months of their live, not much more.
“We will think about something, I promise.” Cathy answered, unsure what to do. “But I am sure we will find a way to solve this problem.”
“And even with Quattro gone, who says the other evil Boskones don’t have access to the technology too? Or can reinvent it?” Vivio continued silently.
Cathy took a deep breath, that was an idea far beyond in the realm of nightmares.
“We have to make sure that we learn how to defend against this technology. The cybers were somehow able to detect it with their implants, maybe we can do this too for an organic brain.”
Cathy nodded, a defense or just a detector for a manipulated mind would be a huge step forward to defuse this kind of attacks.
“I have already asked Jet if I could join the Cyber Federations team to look deeper into this technology. She said she would forward the request.” she replied.
Vivio smiled for a short moment, then she closed her eyes and sighed. “You are right, we will find the right thing to do, both of us. This isn’t over until there are still Boskones left capturing innocent people and sell them as biomodded slaves. We will find a way to make their life miserable.”
Cathy chuckled, then she got serious again. “Yes, that sounds good. We should talk with Cortana about it, she is down in one of the Hangars.”
Vivio was uncertain about this. “I am not sure I want to go to her right now. I know... I know her, but she will not recognize me, because I am not you.”
Cathy sighed, but did not want to press the argument. Both of them still stared out of the window when the transporter left Nehallenia and began to move to Mars.
----
Quattro looked like a caged rat. She had that look in her eyes, a vicious caged hatred. Her cloak had been removed, her glasses taken away. The two transmitters on the side of her head had been disabled. One of her arms had been broken.... by accident. And she was strapped to a steel framed chair by several meters of waved duct-tape.
Jet looked down at her, quite satisfied that she didn’t have a chance in hell of getting free.
“Alright,” she said, trying to put on a lazy front. “Let me tell you where we are. We’re in the front Shuttlebay of the Destiny Nova. That hatch behind you,” Jet pointed to it,” Has been damaged. Two of the three locks are broken. So if we catch you messing around, all it takes is a button push to send you into the void of space where you will remain for a very long time.”
“Fine,” Quattro snarled, glaring hard at Jet. Her expression mutated into a smirk that suggested she was quite content with the situation, that she was working on something.
“Now what’s going to happen is, we’re taking you to meet your grandparents. But, it’ll save everyone a bit of bother if you tell me everything you know about Virtual Slaver Wasp and Agatha Clay before we get there,”
She sneered. “You expect me to talk?”
“Really, I don’t care either way.” Jet responded, following the prepared script. “We can get it all from the computers if you don’t. But thanks to the damage you did to our engines, it’ll take us three days to get to our finally destination..” Jet took a long deep breath. “So that’s three days for you to think about what’s going to happen to you when we get there.”
The plan was to leave her to sit and stew for a while on that.
“Hah... bitch. You only won because of that idiot Senshi being too trusting. If it’d been up to me, your girlfriend and her pet would’ve been dead long ago.” She smiled at the thought. “Or maybe I would just have been gone with two new pets in the cargo hold.”
Jet expression changed into a vicious snarl, her hands clenching together with a sharp clack. She drew in a deep breath, feeling a furious shiver run through her body. Bite back.
“Oh I see... you hate me, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes. It’s buried deep and burned in.... and you hate hating me!” She laughed hard, mocking. “And you hate me because you hate hating me, that’s so hilarious. I...”
Jet grabbed her by the throat, cutting that off with a vice grip. Roaring with fury, she picked the android and chair up single handed. Quattro twitched, beginning to struggle. Jet threw her to the deck, buckling the chair under her body. The whole deck seemed to shake with the force of an impact easily strong enough to kill a human being. The android cried as her broken arm was tweaked. She felt something hot press against her throat, and something else pin her good arm. Opening her good eye, she saw Jet looming over her, face contorted into a horrible sneer, ready to cut her head clean off. The marbled steel of a blade was drawn across her throat, a hair away from her throat.
For just a moment, Quattro thought that maybe it’d worked just a little too well. The weakness had been there, she poked at it... and it blew up in her face.
“Now,” Jet began with a rough edge to her voice that suggested she was trying very hard not to just scream it in her face. “I might have a reputation for being a decent human being and for bringing people in alive, but didn’t your ma ever warn you to beware the nice ones?” she took a ragged breath, adjusting her grip a little.
“You fucked with the brains of my trainees. You screwed with their very selves. You raped... a catgirls mind and put her through some god-awful torture I’ve seen. You tried to kill my partner and Cathy. You would’ve murdered a family. You would’ve ruined us all and our reputations and made us take the fall for your insidious chicken shite.”
Jet stopped. She was staring. Quattro swallowed... an automatic imitation of a human reflex. That blade would go right through synthetic flesh. It’d go right through her head.
“I know you’re trying to goad me into killing you, or breaking that chair, or ruining my own reputation; I’m not a moron. But I’m this close to finding the most god-awful way I can think of to do it. Because I’ve seen what you shitehawks did at Jusenkyou to those kids from Hogwarts. I had good friends I trained with dying and I know what you fuckers made me along the way.”
Quattro tried to move. Jet gripped even tighter, staring right through her at the deckplates beneath.
“Don’t fuck with me, or I will fucking bury you!”
It seemed to ring off the metal walls, hanging for a few seconds. Jet was visibly shaking, her face twitching and red with rage. Her breathing was fast and shallow, hissing through her nostrils.
She held herself steady for long moments, Quattro staring up at her through her one good eye. Jet’s thought process had hung completely. Quattro was stunned into silence. Calmly, Jet began to haul herself back up to her feet, ceramics scraping against metal, leaving the android lying on her back still strapped to a buckled chair.
Jet slowly began to walk towards the hatch, seeming just that little bit dazed. She pulled open the hatch door, stopping at the threshold before glancing back over her shoulder.
“I’m not the one taped up in a shuttlebay. And neither is that ‘idiot senshi’.. Just remember, strong ruling the weak is all fine and dandy until you find someone stronger than you. I’ll leave you with that for a bit.”
The hatch clanged shut behind her, leaving Quattro lying on the deck, forced to choose between staring at the buzzing overhead lights, or staring at the buckled walls which had obviously been hastily stripped of equipment.
She was.....weak.
----
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?