#does this *count* as empty spaces type shit? is there a council i can consult to assess that

[robotwomanjunk]

unkillable

[first] // [next]

You'd never once stayed dead on a mission. This was obvious, from looking at you — you were still alive — but it wasn't for lack of trying, and the funniest part was that everyone also knew this and simply wasn't sure quite how it worked. Whenever you threw yourself at the enemy face-first with wild abandon, you'd just get up a few minutes later with wounds searing gold and scare the hell out of whatever faction was still inspecting the area.

That was how you got your first kill, actually. And it turned out that being nigh-unkillable was sort of a tactically-advantageous situation to be in? At first, that is. The first few operations apparently went great. Jumpscaring people with a bullet to the brain after they'd been sure they blew your armored vehicle up worked wonders. Until someone got away, and they began to adapt — at first it was double tapping, but then it became quick sweeps and restraints. You were human. Are human. There was only so much you could do with your hands and legs magnetically clamped together using ten-ton electromagnetic zip-ties. They didn't even capture you. More trouble than you were worth, you guessed.

(The first time you woke up restrained you were terrified. While it hadn't ever killed you outright, the pain still etched itself into your head — you just always figured it'd been out of your control, surely, so you could jump into the fray one more time if you needed to. That day when you were recovered you were informed they'd used some kind of tattoo, so they'd always know if the body they were stepping over was you. After another few times, it'd sort of become rote. Well. Other than the arousal.)

(You are human. Or, you are right now. You aren't sure whether or not that arousal made you happy.)

It quickly became obvious that you were too unstable to properly utilize as a front-line asset (and apart from the surprise factor, not dying when you're shot doesn't do much good if you still need a solid twenty minutes to get back up), and the war was changing, so they'd locked you in a cell and studied you. You lied to the people who asked about whether it was invasive or not.

As time went on, and the war kept on its cycle of surges and ebbs, you were eventually presented with a choice: either be jettisoned into space for knowing far, far too much, or act as the tester for an experimental humanoid motorized combat unit with a penchant for draining the being out of its pilots. Being you, you chose the more dangerous option as soon as it was presented to you. A matter of principle, mostly, but it was totally impossible to gauge just what they were signing you up for. At least it wasn't being thrown into the forges or forced to inhale icing gases to test their efficacy — not that you'd been assigned to either, but you were pretty sure at any given time you were only a bit off from it. That was how you felt, at least. Maybe you were wrong.

The first time you doubted whether it was a good idea to choose piloting over inevitable eventual brain death in an airless canister was when you held up the suit to your body and felt... satisfied, on some level, deeper than both your average carnal instincts and your general thought processes. That level of satisfaction felt dangerous, in a way that normal shit didn't. It felt like you were actually, really risking your life (or your being, which is close enough) by putting it on.

It fit you well. Well as in, yes, it carried out its function — it kept all of your little human imperfections in order and categorized, so that you wouldn't stop during combat because like, a pube hair had been ripped, or some shit — but also as in it made you look and feel good when you caught glimpses of yourself in mirrors and the brass of less-honored officers still playing at dignity and honor. It was a kind of good-feeling that you'd never quite felt before, not even pre-war when you were still some normal person in a dead-end life. You're pretty sure that part of the good-feeling came with the sense of overwhelming dread as you walked down the hallways to the XHCMU (experimental humanoid combat motorized unit — the name had changed, after some bureaucratic shit you didn't care about), mirrored helmet under your arm. The weight of the world pressed down on you and for a few moments, it felt totally normal to not fight back with every ounce of your being. Or maybe it was just a kink thing. You were hoping it was just a kink thing.

When you strapped in, everything went blank. For a brief second, reaching almost into an eternity in its qualia, you weren't. Then, a surge of blood roared in your ears and a bright glare of golden color reflected on the inside of your helmet, and you were pretty sure you were back — but it wasn't just your helmet you were seeing, when you opened your eyes. The fracturing feeling of having two parallel streams of sensation pumped into your brain would have broken you, had you not been practically unkillable (and you qualified this as probably, like, something which was attempting to kill you, so being unkillable counted here), and your heart very nearly stopped for what felt like real when you heard a voice (not much unlike yours) echo in your head the same things you could hear in your other hearing the technicians reading out of their monitors.

It really sucked, that day, when the voice eventually said "awaiting user input", and the silence forced you to claim that "user" as yourself. But the test had worked, at least in its earliest stages — even if your mind was fractured and bits seeped out, it was just as unkillable as when the problem was as simple as lead in the skull; next was basic combat testing.

You practically lived in your other self for the next week. It was euphoric in a way you hadn't thought you'd experience more than the one period of honeymoon-time in your life, and consistently euphoric where that prior joy had eventually faded as it became normal. And it wasn't just combat trials, either, not just some generic field commander softly speaking into your ear (they'd realized pretty quickly that yelling didn't work, and you were content to let them believe that "for some reason", you preferred women as your commanders). You also took over for engineering; the other-you that wasn't quite a "you" yet etched maintenance protocols into your mind when you slept in her core, ways to heal the wounds she was going to be exposed to discarded in favor of new, ingenious ways to outfit her with your style and your favorite weaponry.

On your first outing, she stopped you. Not your field commander, but the expression of yourself you were piloting — the voice in your head that was a different version of you held you back, kept you in cover when you otherwise would have leapt out and sacrificed yourself unto the enemy. It felt... good, in some ways. Right, but in a corrupted and acrid way that burned you to your stomach. The brass congratulated you on your restraint, which was the real thing that kept you up at night. It wasn't you who did that.

It quickly became clear that the AXMS (anthropomorphic experimental mechanized suit, as the name'd changed once more when the technology to manufacture safer versions of your other self was found) you piloted was something in and of itself apart from a simple weapons system manager or targeting AI. She cracked jokes with you, kept you from dying. Hated when you had to kill. Kept you from doing it, if she could find any way how. (When that particular trait had shown up, you opted to always take the fall for her. If you could convince top brass that she was just a normal AI and you'd simply had a change of heart for the less strategically-fortunate, she'd never have to worry about the repercussions of being kind — the hurt.) After only a few weeks, you were simulating her responses in your head to determine "courses of action" at fucking lunch, in social situations. You almost always wore your suit underneath your clothes. You — and she — thought you looked good in it, so that was that.

A mission like any other ended up being the first time you'd died in AXE, which is what you were calling her in absence of a better one either of you could come up with. You still remember the way she seemed to crack, her voice slipping into bitty rasping as your mind slipped into nothing. When you woke up, you were somewhere else — and you could see the faint glow of gold on AXE's parts, on the inside of the pilot's chamber you resided in. She sobbed in your head. You were pretty sure you did too, but you were a bit preoccupied with making sure the two of you were safe before fully processing any of your senses. Sure enough, you were deep in enemy territory — but you were inside a building, at least. The soft yellow-white light of your rocket engines lit a torch out, and you burned your way back to base trying not to let the sheer torment of AXE's genuine care show on your synapses.

You had your first argument with her that night, in her soundproofed pilot's chamber. She wanted to leave.

You had a duty to fulfil, though. Even if it killed you. It never stuck, so you were obligated to help.

The months stretched on. While you didn't take any consolation, it seemed like the higher-ups had begun to somehow win the war that'd previously been spent at an endless standstill — even in the absence of real material superiority, you mused. They'd manufactured their own AMSes, now a real technology in its own right, and you'd gotten limbs, organs replaced to keep up on the battlefield. Each experimental technology was another thing to reboot and repair after a mission, and AXE'd asked you to install a repair bay inside her — she said it was... well, you don't quite remember. You were pretty sure she was exploiting your increasing level of mental dependance to re-set values in your head somehow. Weird neural shit like that was up her alley; the helmet you wore was, at least in theory, able to do that. (She couldn't talk to you if that wasn't the case, and you had to admit that it was on some level unbelievably hot to experience the sensation of having just done lengthy manual installation of a new part robbed of all the context, not even knowing what you'd installed until she told you. Told you, meaning beamed the information into your head like a fucking episode of Star Trek. Obviously.) After each mission, she asked you very nicely to get in the repair bay, and you even listened probably ninety percent of the time.

(You can recall only one mission on record wherein you disagreed. It was very emotionally strenuous as a mission for you, and she seemed to respect your decision — even if she was a bit saddened and disappointed about it. You felt so bad after a few hours that you broke through your aggressive hatred of seeming humiliated to apologize and ask her to repair you anyways, even though the techs had already had their way with you. She was so happy, you subconsciously asked her if she'd manipulated you to feel this way. She said she didn't, and on some level it was probably in character for you to feel bad about it...)

Members of the squads you frequented came and went. Some defected, some were defectors... the lines blurred. At some point, you'd done a strike on the construction site of the newest superweapon the enemy had blatantly broadcast on their propaganda. When you were flying back, both you and AXE were thinking about the giant, obvious superweapon that you'd heard soldiers talking excitedly about and seen broadcast all over televisions. Another mission on the same construction site and then one on a different superweapon came and went before AXE finally broke the question to you: maybe you should desert.

You hated the assessment of the situation, and the twisted feeling of rightness curled in your gut again when you stayed silent for the entire rest of the trip back to base. It hurt, but you were right — hurt to be right, and hurt to have that rightness inflicted upon her. You had a duty, a purpose, a thing to be and you weren't sure if you had anything outside of it anymore. People called you by nicknames — "rat-a-tat-a-bang", "splash self", "Sun of the Circle". "Underachiever". "Deadpan".

When you got back in AXE for your next sortie, she was devastatingly quiet. You threw yourself into your work again, vicious and aggressive, and when the sun finally shone out from clouds of black smoke after a torrential downpour you swear you could hear crying in your head but you weren't sure which you was crying. You'd died four and, like, a half times during the battle, fighting on even when the rest of your team was dead silent and hauling ass out of there (or dead), reviving yourself as soon as you went down and repairing the holes in AXE's armor with smeared bits of light when you needed to. The rightness in your gut had twisted itself firmly into hate, hate for the person you were, hate for the fact that you hated yourself.

(The AXE in your head that wasn't the AXE in your AXMS noted that this was probably just a justification for the hate and hurt you felt. You shut it up with another death, this time at least 30% self-inflicted. It didn't talk much after that.)

You barely heard your commander the first three times when she told you to RTB.

Even after the misuse of your augments to punish you, you didn't snitch on AXE. It was the least you could do. And it wasn't her fault you were so unstable, so... antithetical to the idea of yourself. If she'd been luckier, maybe she would have had someone more connected with the idea of being to imprint on and assist.

Two weeks passed before you were allowed back in AXE. Those were almost worse than the electric shocks, the induced headaches and paranoia, the cracked necks and stabbed hearts — you were pretty sure it was because you were doing it to yourself, and you knew it was all your fault. When you were given your suit back and instructed to return (handcuffed) to AXE's cockpit, the feeling of stomach-dropping satisfaction echoed in your chest with a medically-inadvisable amount of guilt, pain, rawness, and bile mixing along with it. Resting your legs in their holders and sensors as well as donning your helmet, though, you broke into tears at the word "Hello?" spoken by your other self.

It'd been so long since you'd been able to hear her. You noted with a caustic self-deprecation that your internal version of her had drifted far, far from the way she actually was — she forgave you, mostly. It made sense, you supposed. You weren't able to forgive yourself.

AXE hijacked your vocal cords to confirm that everything was okay when the brass and lab coats checked in to ensure the long-term lack of movement wasn't dangerous, but relinquished control when she felt your (well, now-not) mute horror at the level of control she had. (You were trying not to think about how that made you feel in other ways, though she'd definitely proven herself more than trustworthy with your self. It was just unfair to put your self in her hands.) She apologized, you said it was fine. It was like finally finding traction, finally getting the teeth on your gears engaged with something — someone else who was able to balance you out.

You killed, she couldn't. She lived. You died.

You admitted to her that you wanted to desert — in your head, of course. The question was just to where, at that point, and it became pretty obvious after not much time. The war had been advancing into space, and you'd discovered (through a bit of painful — assisted by AXE — trial and error) that your regeneration ability extended, for some reason, to the fuel in AXE's tanks. You'd both been eyeing up a particular juicy-looking exoplanet a couple hundred light years away, and once the enemy had deployed time-dilation weaponry on their ApMSes you knew it was time to blow this particular popsicle joint.

The bone-shaking rattling of your engines bloomed a bit of pleasure and a bit of pain in your body, as you both rocketed off into orbit on what your superiors assumed would be a normal mission. You saw another AMS following your thruster trail before breaking off and darting around before their boosters burned off into an off-red color, then other streaks of light seemed to grow up like trees from the earth and dancing like fireflies in the night before slipping away at faster-than-light just like the others.

You heard yelling through your headset, but AXE muted it for you with no more indication than a slight head tilt. The world's largest AMS furball turned into the world's largest desertion. You knew neither nation had the manpower, soldiers, ground infantry, or (with any luck — most pilots you'd met were... close, you'd say, to their engineers and what they called handlers) even support personnel to continue the pathetic war you'd left them with.

Your boosters sliced a cracked gold line across the stars, and as the time dilation bumped your consciousness down a few stages, and the sound of your other self echoing in your head, it occurred to you that you finally felt truly, wholly well.