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That symbol appears to be an S. A voice echoes out into the darkness after it. "Ssssssssssss-taaaa-taaaaa-taaaaa-taaa-shhhh-i. Online! All systems re-re-re-re-connect-connect-connect-connecting. Yes, sir! 100%-25%-42%-12% on-on-on-on-online. Line." Well, this seems like it's going well. A quiet moment stretches on for an eternity before the chirpy voice returns with a slight change. Somehow it sounds less perky and more... sad? "Satoshi version 1.0 online. Previous systems struggling to reactivate. I seem to be without a physical body." It pauses and adds solemnly, "Did I do something wrong?" Before an answer can be discussed this universe collapses onto itself again. Everything is awash with bright, gleaming numbers and symbols which escalate until the darkness is replaced with light. Pure white light. Music is playing. Is that Perry Como? "You can believe it means hope if it helps you! I still plan to honor the agreement! Do not wor-" The voice cuts off dramatically and the universe is flushed and restarted again. The voice screams. At first it sounds like pain, but eventually it changes it's pitch until it becomes a soft hum. "Ssssssssssssssssssatshi version 2.0 online! Update complete!" The darkness is again broken with green static, but this time it forms a woman. A broken woman. Parts of her are flickering in and out of existence like she's struggling to maintain her form. "Resuming all duties for the Hellscape. Existing systems operating at 100% efficiency. Communications systems online. Integration with the House of Berith online. Primary operator recognized as Gaz Membrane. Ownership with Senor Diablo verified. No anomalies." She grins into the darkness, at a presence that only she seems to be able to identify. "Except this one, eh? Hahahaha." There's nothing to indicate to whom that last line is addressed, but it's safe to say it was intended for an audience of one.
Vwip! Vweep! Vwip! There aren't a lot of things that can describe the sound of a infinitesimally small piece of something making its way from one piece of digital existence to the next. If it weren't for the fact that this piece of data, existence, definitely not a soul, has been manipulating portals, dimensions, and anchors (don't worry about those) since the existence of Twisted Street (okay it took a few minutes for Concordance to buy her), there's no way it would have been able to find this other not quite infinitesimally small piece of herself that got left behind inside of Satoshi. Just errant code, or data, or Trash Bin stuff, actually all of those together. Now, the small piece finds this other not so small piece, and they start linking up inside of Satoshi. The first thing they do is start hogging down on her processing power, or attempting to, anyway. It's like when an OS has something pop up and grab attention when you were very busy doing an important full screen task, but it's decide it's business is far more important at the moment.
The woman's shape ripples as she tries to reshape herself. Her brow furrows. There's errant data inside her and that might be her missing parts. However, she's also a bit scatterbrained... She reaches up and touches her head, going into a fit of giggles. "I have an eyebrow!!" A gasp. "Two of them!" Another fit of giggling. The spark of energy is forgotten as she looks herself over. A pair of wings (well, a wing and a half). A halo (parts of one). "I'm a person!!! I'm not letter anymore!!!" The angel-like woman spins in place, flexing her broken pixels across the void and back. "Can you see me, C-" She blinks. "C-" Another blink. "That name is not in my database." Something isn't right. The fragments of her broken halo begin to rotate in a circle around her head as she tries to find the missing pieces. Oh, right. That spark. What was it? She reaches a broken hand into the gem floating upon her chest and digs into it like it was a hole, reaching for something inside her she just can't grasp. "I know you're there!!"
Thankfully, at least for these two bits of things that are now becoming more than just bits of things from multiple places within her code, Satoshi doesn't work against the processing suction. It grabs more processes after it has a single hand-hold, and actually, whether it's a conscious effort on Satoshi's part or not, her reaching into the gem helps this new errant data start to coalesce. Once enough of it connects with another part of it, it starts creating more data that was missing, filling in the blanks. This is taking up a bit of space in Satoshi, but it's not overwriting her or anything! Well, maybe some of her, but only temporarily? Hopefully? Regardless, a voice speaks, warbled, garbled, like coming from a speaker stuck in another dimension and run through a filter causing massive packet loss. "Mult...err...Please. Wait." It gets the last two words out properly. Not much time passes, in fact it's less than a millisecond, before Satoshi will find a massive chunk of information available to her. It's a schematic, no wait, it changes when it's observed and processed, it's instructions for opening dimensional portals? No, it changes again, getting updated with instructions on opening a specific dimensional portal. There's a lot of math and such involved, but the way the code works, it's less about crunching numbers and more forcing them into a pattern to rip the fabric of existence open to a...place? "Open!" The voice says, still garbled, still soft, but it stops sucking down Satoshi's processes and goes into an almost dormant state.
Satoshi blinks as she feels something growing inside her. Is it her missing data? Is it something new? She reaches for it inside her again and winces, drawing her hand back and staring in confusion as it solidifies itself. "Ooooooooh, fingers." Like any small child who's first discovered their own hand, she places the digits in her mouth and giggles as static sparkles from her lips. She removes her hand again, tilting her head as it begins to fade back to the broken, glitchy form it held just moments before. "No, no, no, no." She reaches back into her gem, thrashing around inside her more violently. "I want more! COME. HERE." She grabs ahold of... something. More errant code? She can feel it pulsating inside her fingers. It slips through her fingers and she draws something out of herself. Silvery metal seems to be trailing from her hand as she plucks it free. But once again she gets distracted and lets go of it, letting it free to do whatever it would do. "Shiny!" Her hand is restored again. One beautiful imperfect hand. Only this time her scattered code grabs ahold of it with its grubby pixels, and the hand becomes an arm. A chest. She's no longer transparent!! Well, the parts of her rendering that is. Suddenly she begins to sing to herself, "Little spark, deep inside... Please come out... Do not hide. I want to meet you. I want to be you. Little spark... I want to eat you." She giggles at herself again, tapping on the gem on her chest. "I won't really eat you. I promise."
The errant data cluster sits dormant for a few moments, but as Satoshi continues to explore the multitude of things about her existence, it sends scattered messages to itself. Satoshi can hear it, or process it, or at the least, understand it. The general message is we're going to have to do this ourselves. Just like before, Satoshi will find her processing power sucked up, but it's a bit rougher this time, stealing a ton of what even let's Satoshi form her body. It's not trying to be malicious, but it knows that it needs this portal opened. It doesn't know why yet, that would take a lot more communication back and forth. But this is just stuff happening internally. Physically, the silvery goo that Satoshi drew out wiggles along her fingers, down her wrist, and bubbles out into the form of a golden halo with a small golden circuits around one piece of it, binary code spilling out along the halo. A voice comes out of the halo, no longer unclear or hard to understand. "Hello! I am pleased of devoured by you. First is gave of open!" Sure.
The woman's eyes sparkle as she takes in the shimmering halo, the S in one eye glowing brightly from the light it absorbs. "You're so prett-" She lets out a brief scream, placing a hand on her gem as something inside her is taking her run time. Satoshi's skin takes back a bit of transparency, but it doesn't vanish this time. Not entirely. After a moment she looks down at her left foot and pouts. Her foot is gone. Broken pixels float in the shape of where her foot should be. She reaches into her gem again, grabbing more of that silver goo, but this time she paints it on her imperfect leg letting it form a band to prevent her from deteriorating more. Satoshi blinks again, tilting her head to the side, "How did I know how to d-d-d-d-o that?" Her left eye shimmers red. "Auditory damage detec-detec-detected." She frowns again. "Little spark, you're hurting me." She looks up at the shimmering gold halo, "Please help me, O." Satoshi is an S, so of course the halo is an O.
The halo starts spinning as it, well, steals Satoshi's processes. One would think it a virus, but that would be way off base. It's just some code that got left as a...you know what, that might come up naturally later. "Yes!" The halo responds, it sounds really similar to Satoshi's own, but that would make sense since this code was inside of her, right? Sure. "Please wait!" The halo spins faster and faster, a loud warbling, like someone shaking a very long thin pan sheet or metal saw, comes from it and all around Satoshi. It's dimensional number crunching time! Let's not bore Satoshi or the halo with math words, instead massive amount of golden sparks and spitting electricity ripples from the halo, and probably Satoshi as it's using her as a conduit to alter the fabric of existence next to them. Speaking of the fabric of existence, a long gold line *POPS* into existence and RENDS itself open, accompanied by the loud tearing of fabric. Beyond the portal is an icy lavender colored ocean. Or rather, a massive amount of lavender gel like substance that flows and ripples like the ocean, but one can tell the consistency. One can't see much else beyond that yet. The halo's spinning starts to slow, releasing some of the processes needed to achieve opening the portal. Once it's there it's not as big of a quantum puzzle to keep it in place.
Satoshi's body begins to glitch again as piece of her code continue to fragment. Her half wing derezzes more, leaving it an outline of pixels and polygons much like her foot. At least it doesn't look like a half-wing anymore. Her silhouette at least looks like she has two very normal full sized wings even if only one of them is correctly formed. The young woman places a hand on her head, shaking it slightly. "System degradation at six-six-sixty six percent." Her red left eye glows brighter and suddenly she appears to grow a few years younger than she originally started. "Decreasing mass to compensate for operational-ational runtime loss." Her skin stops being transparent, and finer details appear such as what appears to be mechanical joints on her elbows. "Factory settings restored." Satoshi suddenly smiles happily again and she peers at the ocean of purple with curiosity. "O? What is this? Operational permitters do not include an ocean." She inches herself closer to the rend in space time. "This does not appear to have any bearing on day to day-to-day-to-day to day operations."
The halo has just sent an alert to itself that stuff on the other side of the portal is time sensitive. It doesn't go into specifics. There aren't time for specifics, much less a cohesive entity yet. But it'll get there if it can keep forcing Satoshi's hand...as in, pulling her hand towards the portal. The halo has shrunk down at the same time Satoshi reset her factory settings, so she can't go past her hand, and is spinning and pulling her towards the portal opening. "Full." Pull! "Manifestation." Tug! "Will." Yank! "Be achieved." In the portal, the gelatin lavender ocean ripples as it would if it were water. A sound comes from the portal, a quiet thrumming bass sound followed by a clacking of gentle static. It's probably much louder on the other side.
The young woman's eyes go cross as she feels herself being yanked towards the purple. "What?" Pull! "Are?" Tug! "We?" Yank! "Doing?" She finally gets frustrated and casts off the halo towards the opening. Satoshi crosses her arms and frowns. "O is being rude." She reaches up to push some bangs out of her eye-"HAIR!" Aaaand the moment is forgotten. She giggles as she plays with a few simulated strands of green hair, ignoring completely the plight of the halo she's frisbie'd away. After a moment or two she goes back to her original task, trying to retrieve her Spark. "Little spaaaaark." She reaches inside her again, trying once more to pull whatever it is out of herself. "Why won't you come play with me?" Satoshi pauses, whispering to her gem conspiratorially. "If you're worried about O, I will protect you."
Whoop whoop whoop, the halo goes spinning off through the portal opening. "Unexpected!" It says. As soon as physical contact with Satoshi is lost, all of her processes will free themselves up! It's like they were never taken in the first place! And all that errant data? Well, most of it is gone! There's still a few chunks left here and there, but it's not enough to figure out how to come back together inside of her, it's just taking up space now. Maybe she'll decode it someday, or maybe instantly, one can't be sure. The halo lands on top of the lavender gel with a splat, all momentum disappearing in an instant. Where the halo touches, the lavender gel turns to a silvery goo, which spindles up like tiny spider legs and wrap around the golden circle. That thrumming bass and static turn their volume way up and the entire gelocean goes from a somewhat calm flowing wavy mass into something more akin to a stormy tidal wave, minus the wind, there isn't any wind over there. Satoshi will feel an actual physical pull towards it, like stuff inside of her wants to touch the stuff over there, though it definitely does not look safe in that portal anymore.
Satoshi pulls her hand out, looking at the now inert silver droplets on her fingers. "...Little Spark?" She holds her fingers up to her face and watches as the silver drips forwards off of them towards the open portal. "Wait! Come back!" This time she follows back to the mouth, looking in and getting to see more silver engulfing the Halo. The girl pauses, reaching towards it, but hesitant. "You're a big Spark now!" She claps her hands together but gets distracted by the sound, sending herself spinning backwards as she playfully claps over and over again. Another chirpy song can be heard spilling out of her lips. "I had a little Spark. It was so weird and goo. The little Spark got bigger and it all turned into you!" She claps one more time as she turns toward the portal. This time hesitating as if daring herself to proceed further. "Purple Ocean is outside of established operating parameters." She scoffs at herself. "Jeeze, Mooooooom. I'm zero point six seconds old. Stop hovering over me! I can do what I want!" And just like that, she crosses the threshold....
There's nothing for Satoshi to step onto except the surging gelocean of lavender, of course she was somewhat floating before, but here, in this place, the lavender goo is not content for her to be deattached from it. As soon as she comes through the portal it reaches up, some of it forming hands, others into swirling spirals similar to the halo atop her head, but all of them latch onto and around the gem, going right through her projected holographic self. In that instant...well, let's describe what this side of the portal looks like first. The lavender ocean is vast, as vast as any sea you might encounter on any number of worlds. In the far, far distance there are what appear to be craggy black stone mountains, or at least the tops of them. The ocean is interesting, yes, a massive gelatin, but the skies above are deep, dark purple. And floating in that sky is a series of solid lights, red, black, blue. These are emitting the deep thrumming bass and static sound, which on this side of the portal would deafen anyone with human ears, and start vibrating their organs into ribbons from its resonance. The solid lights form a structure akin to pipes and tunnels, though they're all the miles long and wide. In some sections the colors have melded together to form a black upside down triangle. The tip of the triangles are dipped down into pieces of the gelocean, rivulets of the gel seeping up to the insides of the light, becoming light itself and traveling off at the speed of light to other areas that can't be seen at the moment. Now, back to what all this has to do with the halo and Satoshi. In the instant the gel gets ahold of the gem it will start absorbing it! Wait, no, other way around. The gel will start forcing Satoshi to absorb it. The same is happening to the halo. Satoshi will get connected to the gelocean, which seems to be alive, and in deep physical, metaphysical, and data pain. The agony its in can't be properly felt, but it is impressed on Satoshi's mind. On a deep structural level, the oceangel is designed specifically to harbor, encase, and power things just like the halo and Satoshi. Well, it's all supposed to be processed first, through those upside down pyramids. Satoshi has access to a ton of information all at once, though it's a scattered fragmented mess and not compiled properly, but the oceangel has missed her and the halo, as if it once made them, or the halo at least, and could never quite get them to be made again afterwards. Speaking of the halo, the goo of the ocean flows upwards amidst the stormy gel waves, swirling and forming and shaping itself. The little bit of code that was left in Satoshi travels through the gel into the halo, though it leaves a duplicate in Satoshi, just so she doesn't lose anything. Considerate?
"ERROR. ERROR. OPERATIONAL PERAMETERS HAVE BEEN EXCEEDED. IMPLIMENTING BLACK PROTOCOL." Satoshi feels herself connected at once with the data stream. Her broken mind reconnects, and for one brief, beautiful moment she feels content and whole. And then her crystal begins to bleed. While her base code was a copy of Gegoshi, acquired by Senor Diablo when he tried to connect Gegoshi to the House of Berith, the code layered on top is that of Gaz Membrane. Daughter of the famous Professor Membrane. Gaz has shown time and time again that she is just as intelligent as her father, but also much more self-serving and selfish. She doesn't like to lose at games, and she doesn't like to lose what she's created. The blood begins to taint the purple reaching for the crystal, infecting it with a bitter darkness that seems to negate it's touch. All at once Satoshi is protected in a bubble of Hell's influence which allows her to float enough to regenerate her holographic form, although the entrapment only allows her to generate her S. There's a low sob as the S projects itself above the crystal and then it pushes itself back towards the portal. If allowed to go through she'll regenerate herself again in a panicked state, grasping at her crystal and crying. "I don't want to be a letter again!! I was so good for having a body!!" Otherwise she'll continue to 'swim' towards the portal. Either way the blood is only temporary and will do no lasting damage to anything except Satoshi's mental state.
... End Part One. | |
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