Post by Rico Rojas on Oct 4, 2015 16:36:16 GMT -5
WAR
For Hank Brown, “World War Omega” carried with it, at least for a little while, a strange level of excitement. A main event chaser to dull the all consuming terror that surround him. For the first time in his meager, corduroy life, Hank had attained an unusual plateau of importance. He was there, the voice of the resistance; locking horns with history at the center of the action. Hank was reporting all the ground zeroes, all the days of infamy. The fall of Texas and the irradiation of Chicago. He cried on air as Washington fell to a kamazai Maratopian World fortress. The day they raised that thirteen bars and one, single Omega symbol, Hank did not cower; instead, a voice of hope called out a booming rallying cry to a shattered nation to remain resolute. To stand firm against the ever encroaching darkness.
That was the day he sealed his own fate.
War, that bastard always finds some way to fuck up your life.
Hank's safe house in Paris was raided by a battalion of mecha-skinned extraction teams. They murdered Hank's new Prostitute wife and strangled his infant son. Once they were sure Hank knew the full, horrific plans for his dead family, they allowed the starving raptors inside his art studio apartment, situated five stories above a smoldering champs élysées. They placed a black bag over Hank Brown's screaming head, dragged him out into the cobbled streets and clubbed him to the ground. Hank Brown was unceremoniously whisked away into the night; three days later, they dumped his naked, frightened form at the feet of a leering Torture. Hank's new father and mother welcomed his son with open cybernetic talons. Hank faced his new God and Hosia that day, a terrified man frozen to the spot. And thus, Hank's re-programming began.
War takes away dignity, strip by agonizing strip. Sometimes you get lucky, and its simply flesh off the bones. Hank wasn't so lucky. They wanted to break his mind. To rebuild that meek little man from the quivering ground up. So they made Hank memorize a sweet little tale about a cowardly Knight and a brave baby Dragon...or was it a Brave Knight and a wisecracking Orc. Or was it...?
Hank memorized the story as he was told, line by line, but each time they changed it. Revised that story over and over again. And each time he remembered the wrong version, because there was no right version; just a new excuse to punish him, until they convinced Hank that he was wrong all along. Until he believed everything he was told. He wanted to, he begged to, just as long as they'd stop removing his fingernails and shriving his spleen.
Once they had Hank, they began the augmentation treatments. They created a new Frankenstein for the field. They thought it would be good P.R. The voice of the resistance now a figurehead for the Confederacy. But when they unveiled their new, terrifying creation. Nobody cared. Hank Brown, had somehow remained Hank Brown all along. His uncanny ability to be forgotten became his final “fuck you!” to a world that broke him, shattering a man into a million pieces still couldn't shake who he was. There's a funny joke in that.
So, Hank was shipped out, he pin-balled from administrative job to administrative job. A class eight cybernetic flesh slayer, pushing paper and stamping exodus orders.
And tonight, after a long night of hell, we would finally meet up once again.
2. A STORY FOR CHILDREN
Combatants: The rest of you sorry bastards
Future tense. Texas Exodus Point - Gamma three. 2022.
“Name?”
Rico: Is that you Hank? I-I can't see.
Commander Hank Brown: We've deactivated your eyes. They seem to contain temporal technology and a positronic nerve center. That's expensive toys for a lower level conscript. Broadcasting through time is illegal under article seventy six of the Omega treaty.
Rico: Doesn't it bother you how everything begins with the word, “Omega”. The war. The treaty. This base presumingly. Isn't there part of you, Hank, that still sees, that can still see...for the both of us?
Commander Hank Brown: No need.
Rico eyes reboot, subroutines flood his blurred vision as the world around him finally gains precious dimensions and rare shapes. Hank Brown has changed much since that day he was kidnapped back in Paris; “a man machine of brutal efficiency”, was the synopsis for the Maratopian skunk works team that rebuilt him. His insectoid legs carried a slender, spindle form; this Hank Brown had managed to hang onto just enough humanity to make him the stuff of nightmares. The metal augmentations clicked and clacked as he walked upon the metal surface of the interrogation room.
As Hank's cybernetic form echoed around him, Rico began to realize the full extent of his predicament. He was chained by the wrists to a table. Dressed in prison garb. C.A.M could not be contacted; her functions quelled under the yoke of a dampening field. Rico could see, but he had no magic tricks to pull. Just his free will now remained. And he wondered, as the man monster named of Hank approached, how long that would remain.
Commander Hank Brown: Do you fear me, Rico? I can sense your heart beating faster.
Rico: There's an eight foot tall cybernetic half-human half-insect monster breathing down my neck. For a quarter of a billion Maratopian dollars worth of technology, you're still as dumb as shit, Brown. Tell me, is there some small part of you that remembers who you once were?
Commander Hank Brown: Weakness is not meant to be commended.
Rico smiles. There it is, the slither of a chance. If he can only prize it open.
Rico: Do you remember War? The event? Remember that year I first entered? You wanted an interview and I...
Nothing.
Commander Hank Brown: Tell me, Rico. Why Kill Steel? Why kill one of your own?
Rico: He wasn't “One of my own”. He was yours. They're all yours. All the little automatons lined up in a row. They always have been, all the way back to Pantheon and the DRG and the AOD and God the fuck knows who else. They're assembly line drones. Your soldiers; drawing battle lines and making plans. This world we exist in, the world you've managed to fuck up for my daughter. Who has that on their conscience? Is it Corey Black and his fucking goon squad? Look at the madness they've brought to this world. Alex Richards and his Zim Quilla nightmares; an abused little child handed a loaded gun to run riot over a federation and told he's the hero. Was he? No. He was a psychopath that played the angel when it suited him. Was he a hero during the era of the pack? No. Because that didn't suit him; but it suits him to search for sympathy when he can get it. He turned tragedy into a commodity. He devalued the horror of his life and made abuse routine. And you, Hank Brown, you let him do it. You and Seth.
SLAM! Hank brings down a thunderous clenched fist down on the table. It almost wrenches away from it's bolted mourning as Rico leans back away from the attack.
Commander Hank Brown: Never speak of Seth Leach again. You hear me flesh bag? NEVER!
Hmm, interesting.
Rico: You want to know why I killed Kyle Steel today? Because I could see my own Humanity slip away. Standing there, watching a psychopath wish he could feast like a Monster. How could I do nothing? Haven't we lived though enough era's of “good men” doing nothing? Jeff Purse making his big plans for the future, and what do they turn into? Prissy little diatribes on the moral boundaries of a fucking no holds barred combat sport. So another hero turns from pillar of excellence to moral fascist. Or Thomas Urial Bates, pledging to eradicate “the undesirables”, but really, we all know what that means. Because a Thomas Urial Bates was always going to stamp a southern boot down upon the land of the free and the home of the WCF. He had an agenda, and you, Hank...you let him run roughshod over everything. And just like how everyone predicted, it all came to naught. Because a Thomas Urial Bates is nothing but show, until the show needs him. Then he runs with his Robert E. Lee tail between his big fat legs like a fucking coward. Which coincidentally, is exactly what he was. All the fucking way home. Fuck that Seth Lerch lovin' motherfuc--
Commander Hank Brown: NO!
Computations flood Hanks Brown's frontal memory blades. He accesses detailed files on an era long since gone. Hank zeroes in on #beachkrew, he targets their weaknesses as he was programmed to do; then, he strikes.
Commander Hank Brown: Do you know how the rest of the WCF saw your friends? How they saw you? I mean truly? They were idiots, fools with match box sized talents, stretched to breaking point over elephant sized egos. Los Tiburones was a frat boy pretending to be an educated mastermind. Parading a brought and paid for college education as if he was the only learned man in the entire fucking world. Drug taking, contrary to his popular belief, is not ironic. It's not fucking meta. Jared Holmes was a doped up charlatan, waxing lyrical over matters his air-headed skull could barely fathom. He was never catcher in the rye, more a details branded idiot. Kyle Kemp? The Pete Rose of the WCF? The only thing he could slam dunk was an express ticket to the mid card. The over groomed fuck-wit could never handle the pressure, he blew every chance he was given. That People's championship was his through default alone rather than choice. Every match he was in, Kyle barely scarped by, or won when others around him cancelled themselves out. And this Wade Moor? With the stupid tattoo? Let me inform you; he's transient, he's a dull note in a symphony. He's a stand in for the main event, a tap dancing buffoon who jumps to the sound of cheers and boos. Wade Moor is the sum of all clichés, and he's about as effectual as a ninety year old scrotum. He's a flushed turd pretending to be a man, and the day his eyes open to that fact is the glorious moment we all get to witness his face contort with horror as he swallows a gun barrel and pulls the fucking trigger. The world needs to snap chat that event with fireworks and smiling children. Look at your idiotic friend, Rico, what he has managed to accomplish? He's a holding patten. A nothing man with a gut full of regret that he lived while the others took a ride to starship heaven. Wade has achieved zero in his career, and now that the world needs him, what is he? A mindless wanderer lost amongst the Warlands. Rico, you were always his better, in both poise and ability. The WCF didn't see it at first, it needed to be...well, it needed to be trained to understand. But eventually, they came around. They were a horse lead to water. But once they drank? Your accomplishments far out shined Wade's on an almost unimaginable level. That is why you were chosen to hold the line, Rico. That is why you're such a disappointment to us now. Why? Why turn your back on us? Your saviors from Oblivion.
Rico: Oblivion? You mean Stephen Johnson and his bastard AOD, with their bargain basement demonology and random violence? And what about Gemini Battle and his Grayson Pierce split personality, that never seems to pay for the myriad of crimes he's committed? The WCF paved the way for everything. The world is just an escalation of the madness you presided over, Hank. An insanity contained within a microcosm that became the macrocosm that consumed a nation. And above us all, the all mighty Jay Omega and the lord God Torture. Tell me Hank, tell me again that story about the Dragon. Or as it an Orc. Because that's classic Torture. He writes the history books, then demands you wait until passing judgement so he can write those pages again, and he just excepts you to believe his new version of the truth, because Torture is truth. Only truth to torture is what..what is it, Hank? Tell me...TELL ME!
Commander Hank Brown: Treachery...truth is treachery. There is no truth with Torture. Its all fucking bullshit! I...I wanted to remember the story, right. I wanted to get it right. To be free. I--
Rico got in. He fucking did it.
Rico: There is no truth with Torture. Just Treachery. His word is a lie built upon greater lies by greater men. Just as this world is an Omega nightmare, dragged from the minds of Huxley and Orwell. Just was Omega's teachings have always been the filleted backbones of Pulp science fiction. Only with unlimited resources and a cause to fight, it all became real, but corrupted. Just as Jay was always destined to become corrupted. The man who can never lose, the eugenics superman out to conquer a world. Only when he does lose, it has to be down to something. What, Hank? What makes an Omega lose? Analyse and compute!
Commander Hank Brown: I—I can't. Its not possible. Omega can never lose.
Rico: He's losing you, right here and now. He's losing you, and there's nothing he can do about it. THINK HANK! How can an Omega lose?
Commander Hank Brown: Human. He's simply...human. And he can never accept that.
Rico smiles.
Rico: So Hank Brown. Super kill bot of the future. Wanna run away?
Commander Hank Brown: The Warlands? What about your wife, and your child?
Rico: Someone once told me. “Never start your day without a plan”. Those chain guns of yours, are they operational? Because there's gonna be a lot of blood before this day is out.
Hank's fourth arm unfolds like an impossible magic trick, producing a chain gun containing ninety thousand rounds of spitting death.
Commander Hank Brown: I think there's some truth in what you say.
Rico: well then. Lets get this war started.
ONE WAR ENDS, ANOTHER BEGINS.
THIS ERA, IT SHALL CONTINUE.
AT ONE...
THE CONCLUSION.
Commander Hank Brown: We've deactivated your eyes. They seem to contain temporal technology and a positronic nerve center. That's expensive toys for a lower level conscript. Broadcasting through time is illegal under article seventy six of the Omega treaty.
Rico: Doesn't it bother you how everything begins with the word, “Omega”. The war. The treaty. This base presumingly. Isn't there part of you, Hank, that still sees, that can still see...for the both of us?
Commander Hank Brown: No need.
Rico eyes reboot, subroutines flood his blurred vision as the world around him finally gains precious dimensions and rare shapes. Hank Brown has changed much since that day he was kidnapped back in Paris; “a man machine of brutal efficiency”, was the synopsis for the Maratopian skunk works team that rebuilt him. His insectoid legs carried a slender, spindle form; this Hank Brown had managed to hang onto just enough humanity to make him the stuff of nightmares. The metal augmentations clicked and clacked as he walked upon the metal surface of the interrogation room.
As Hank's cybernetic form echoed around him, Rico began to realize the full extent of his predicament. He was chained by the wrists to a table. Dressed in prison garb. C.A.M could not be contacted; her functions quelled under the yoke of a dampening field. Rico could see, but he had no magic tricks to pull. Just his free will now remained. And he wondered, as the man monster named of Hank approached, how long that would remain.
Commander Hank Brown: Do you fear me, Rico? I can sense your heart beating faster.
Rico: There's an eight foot tall cybernetic half-human half-insect monster breathing down my neck. For a quarter of a billion Maratopian dollars worth of technology, you're still as dumb as shit, Brown. Tell me, is there some small part of you that remembers who you once were?
Commander Hank Brown: Weakness is not meant to be commended.
Rico smiles. There it is, the slither of a chance. If he can only prize it open.
Rico: Do you remember War? The event? Remember that year I first entered? You wanted an interview and I...
Nothing.
Commander Hank Brown: Tell me, Rico. Why Kill Steel? Why kill one of your own?
Rico: He wasn't “One of my own”. He was yours. They're all yours. All the little automatons lined up in a row. They always have been, all the way back to Pantheon and the DRG and the AOD and God the fuck knows who else. They're assembly line drones. Your soldiers; drawing battle lines and making plans. This world we exist in, the world you've managed to fuck up for my daughter. Who has that on their conscience? Is it Corey Black and his fucking goon squad? Look at the madness they've brought to this world. Alex Richards and his Zim Quilla nightmares; an abused little child handed a loaded gun to run riot over a federation and told he's the hero. Was he? No. He was a psychopath that played the angel when it suited him. Was he a hero during the era of the pack? No. Because that didn't suit him; but it suits him to search for sympathy when he can get it. He turned tragedy into a commodity. He devalued the horror of his life and made abuse routine. And you, Hank Brown, you let him do it. You and Seth.
SLAM! Hank brings down a thunderous clenched fist down on the table. It almost wrenches away from it's bolted mourning as Rico leans back away from the attack.
Commander Hank Brown: Never speak of Seth Leach again. You hear me flesh bag? NEVER!
Hmm, interesting.
Rico: You want to know why I killed Kyle Steel today? Because I could see my own Humanity slip away. Standing there, watching a psychopath wish he could feast like a Monster. How could I do nothing? Haven't we lived though enough era's of “good men” doing nothing? Jeff Purse making his big plans for the future, and what do they turn into? Prissy little diatribes on the moral boundaries of a fucking no holds barred combat sport. So another hero turns from pillar of excellence to moral fascist. Or Thomas Urial Bates, pledging to eradicate “the undesirables”, but really, we all know what that means. Because a Thomas Urial Bates was always going to stamp a southern boot down upon the land of the free and the home of the WCF. He had an agenda, and you, Hank...you let him run roughshod over everything. And just like how everyone predicted, it all came to naught. Because a Thomas Urial Bates is nothing but show, until the show needs him. Then he runs with his Robert E. Lee tail between his big fat legs like a fucking coward. Which coincidentally, is exactly what he was. All the fucking way home. Fuck that Seth Lerch lovin' motherfuc--
Commander Hank Brown: NO!
Computations flood Hanks Brown's frontal memory blades. He accesses detailed files on an era long since gone. Hank zeroes in on #beachkrew, he targets their weaknesses as he was programmed to do; then, he strikes.
Commander Hank Brown: Do you know how the rest of the WCF saw your friends? How they saw you? I mean truly? They were idiots, fools with match box sized talents, stretched to breaking point over elephant sized egos. Los Tiburones was a frat boy pretending to be an educated mastermind. Parading a brought and paid for college education as if he was the only learned man in the entire fucking world. Drug taking, contrary to his popular belief, is not ironic. It's not fucking meta. Jared Holmes was a doped up charlatan, waxing lyrical over matters his air-headed skull could barely fathom. He was never catcher in the rye, more a details branded idiot. Kyle Kemp? The Pete Rose of the WCF? The only thing he could slam dunk was an express ticket to the mid card. The over groomed fuck-wit could never handle the pressure, he blew every chance he was given. That People's championship was his through default alone rather than choice. Every match he was in, Kyle barely scarped by, or won when others around him cancelled themselves out. And this Wade Moor? With the stupid tattoo? Let me inform you; he's transient, he's a dull note in a symphony. He's a stand in for the main event, a tap dancing buffoon who jumps to the sound of cheers and boos. Wade Moor is the sum of all clichés, and he's about as effectual as a ninety year old scrotum. He's a flushed turd pretending to be a man, and the day his eyes open to that fact is the glorious moment we all get to witness his face contort with horror as he swallows a gun barrel and pulls the fucking trigger. The world needs to snap chat that event with fireworks and smiling children. Look at your idiotic friend, Rico, what he has managed to accomplish? He's a holding patten. A nothing man with a gut full of regret that he lived while the others took a ride to starship heaven. Wade has achieved zero in his career, and now that the world needs him, what is he? A mindless wanderer lost amongst the Warlands. Rico, you were always his better, in both poise and ability. The WCF didn't see it at first, it needed to be...well, it needed to be trained to understand. But eventually, they came around. They were a horse lead to water. But once they drank? Your accomplishments far out shined Wade's on an almost unimaginable level. That is why you were chosen to hold the line, Rico. That is why you're such a disappointment to us now. Why? Why turn your back on us? Your saviors from Oblivion.
Rico: Oblivion? You mean Stephen Johnson and his bastard AOD, with their bargain basement demonology and random violence? And what about Gemini Battle and his Grayson Pierce split personality, that never seems to pay for the myriad of crimes he's committed? The WCF paved the way for everything. The world is just an escalation of the madness you presided over, Hank. An insanity contained within a microcosm that became the macrocosm that consumed a nation. And above us all, the all mighty Jay Omega and the lord God Torture. Tell me Hank, tell me again that story about the Dragon. Or as it an Orc. Because that's classic Torture. He writes the history books, then demands you wait until passing judgement so he can write those pages again, and he just excepts you to believe his new version of the truth, because Torture is truth. Only truth to torture is what..what is it, Hank? Tell me...TELL ME!
Commander Hank Brown: Treachery...truth is treachery. There is no truth with Torture. Its all fucking bullshit! I...I wanted to remember the story, right. I wanted to get it right. To be free. I--
Rico got in. He fucking did it.
Rico: There is no truth with Torture. Just Treachery. His word is a lie built upon greater lies by greater men. Just as this world is an Omega nightmare, dragged from the minds of Huxley and Orwell. Just was Omega's teachings have always been the filleted backbones of Pulp science fiction. Only with unlimited resources and a cause to fight, it all became real, but corrupted. Just as Jay was always destined to become corrupted. The man who can never lose, the eugenics superman out to conquer a world. Only when he does lose, it has to be down to something. What, Hank? What makes an Omega lose? Analyse and compute!
Commander Hank Brown: I—I can't. Its not possible. Omega can never lose.
Rico: He's losing you, right here and now. He's losing you, and there's nothing he can do about it. THINK HANK! How can an Omega lose?
Commander Hank Brown: Human. He's simply...human. And he can never accept that.
Rico smiles.
Rico: So Hank Brown. Super kill bot of the future. Wanna run away?
Commander Hank Brown: The Warlands? What about your wife, and your child?
Rico: Someone once told me. “Never start your day without a plan”. Those chain guns of yours, are they operational? Because there's gonna be a lot of blood before this day is out.
Hank's fourth arm unfolds like an impossible magic trick, producing a chain gun containing ninety thousand rounds of spitting death.
Commander Hank Brown: I think there's some truth in what you say.
Rico: well then. Lets get this war started.
ONE WAR ENDS, ANOTHER BEGINS.
THIS ERA, IT SHALL CONTINUE.
AT ONE...
THE CONCLUSION.
