#they were both used by the handler - and isolated to become killing machines

[bardicious]

I'm just so happy that Five got to be soft with someone, and that Lila reciprocated his love. 😭🥺❤️

[bvccy]

Tenderness and Ferocity | 3. The Dream and the Third Day

Pairing: Winter Soldier!Bucky Barnes x Hydra!Reader Fic Synopsis: The Winter Soldier is starting to make stupid mistakes in the field, which is Bucky's way of trying to wrest back control and sabotage his handlers. Hydra brings a new doctor to figure out what's wrong with him and fix it. As she spends time with him, she becomes fond of the Winter Soldier, and he becomes fond of her. Bucky has other ideas. Or, a fic in which the Winter Soldier is the good guy and Bucky is actually the bad guy. Warnings for this chapter: Angst, Smut, Noncon Word count: 2334 Read on AO3: [link] [Previous Chapter] [Fic Masterlist] [Next Chapter]

"Life in essence can only be sustained because of the discontinuity. Why else does one sleep? Not to rest, but above all to forget. [...] If one could prevent mankind from sleeping, I am convinced that a massacre without end would ensue; it would mean the end of history." — Emil Cioran

All the useless gadgets clattered, without clattering, to the floor. The exposed skin of her back shone against the pressing dark, under a light that wasn't there. Her arms stretched out in front of her to grab the table, to clench in little fists, to crawl away from him... He clasped both her wrists in one heavy hand while he held her by the hip with the other. The stranger looked unfamiliar and out of place, yet boyishly handsome, a lissome thoroughbred cut from pale stone.

He'd already yanked her shirt halfway down her back, leaving a delicate pair of peachy straps to cut into her shoulders as she tried to pull herself up and away. With his other hand, he raised the black flag of her skirt inch by hurried inch. Two flesh hands, pawing at her squirming silhouette.

Those legs that had teased him so were now buckled in a tangle of red lace, at once parted and constricted and leaving her fully victim to him. Above her he loomed, then leaned, slowly down to feel her warmth, his dark green shirt sticking against her back.

In a voice dry with disuse he taunted her to say that she wanted it, to beg for it, though he sounded utterly disinterested and his eyes — he couldn't actually see his eyes, but he could hear that same disuse and disinterest ringing in their glare. She whimpered underneath him but said nothing, insulted from both directions by his grimy touch and transparent insults.

"Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?" said the stranger — but not to him, nor to her — as he buried his face in her fragrant hair and his hips into hers and himself into her... But no relief came, nor satisfaction, and it felt like no matter how close he got to her, couldn't be further away.

He battered and battered and broke through, with great delight at just the effort, and he made tremors rise then relent in her tense legs. Her high heels tapped against the floor in a trembling rhythm that undercut her plaintive moans until he stopped, and settled inside her, and laughed against her shoulder in a harsh exhale. He taunted her over how she sounded, how she felt, how he felt in her.

The more she withdrew, the more aggressively he followed, always fighting her and pulling the fight out of her in honeydew dollops that had nowhere left to go but to seep and stain his nice trousers. Her shoulders went up in a useless attempt to hide, but he squeezed her wrists in warning and bit her shoulder, the nape of her neck, anywhere he could reach that would punish her until she learned to stay still.

"Oooh yesss, that's it... I hate you so much." he laughed in manic joy, eyes falling closed against her throat.

The hand that held her hip squeezed her closer, pressing her so desperately against him like he was trying to crawl up inside and never leave. She whined in pain, muffled by her arms and the table. The stranger cooed against her ear and teased against her hips, turned her inside out and back together, discordant with her mewls and wails as he clung to her and she unconsciously to him the more his galloping pace opened her up and brought her out to meet him.

He wasn't so much pleasing himself as punishing her, and only interrupted his focus to laugh or hiss at some new-discovered throbbing, a frisson to rub against, a frothy surrender that he worked hard to push through until she took it again.

"I'm gonna kill you," he snarled down at her. "I swear I'm gonna kill you..."

No amount of resistance could carry her through his punishing thrusts, and no surrender was enough, and it all went on and on until the threads holding her up started to unravel, leaving her a blushing rough and bloody shade that the stranger could claim as an extension of himself. He rubbed away the parts that weren't base and grimed up what was left. Only thoughtless sounds came out of her now as she struggled to fit him, and fit into him.

The stranger heaved hotly with the effort of holding still, feeling over and through her deliberately and seeking still more, pressing his body down to suppress her new, aching, wet shivers.

With a pain melting through her surrender, down, down into pleasure, she tried to plead with him and she moaned his name, his real name, but after the first flush of recognition he stopped caring because he knew he wouldn't remember it anyway and —

Wait, why wouldn't he remember it?

Eyes shot open only to be greeted by the cement ceiling of his cell. The Soldier sighed and turned his head, looking at the corner where the bulbous little camera was. He looked to the door and saw the parting screen still closed shut — he was awake too early. With a groan, he turned over in his cot and pressed the cold metal hand where he ached.

On their third session, after the guardsmen left, he stepped into the room to find a collection of strange equipment and wires on the table, and a mix of subtle scents coming from two wooden containers. She sat in her chair, waiting for him with a smile, her sleek legs crossed together tightly. She wasn't wearing her lab coat anymore.

"Good morning." she said as they closed the door. "Come on in, sit down. None of this stuff is going to hurt you, I promise."

Reluctantly, he obeyed, his boots sounding slow and heavy through the room as he made his way toward her. He let himself fall in the seat and rested his hands on his tense thighs.

"It's just a GSR monitor. I'll only strap these around your fingers, you won't feel a thing." She demonstrated by wrapping one around her finger, wiggling, holding it up for his doubtful eyes. He had no choice anyway, so he rested his right arm on the table. She took his hand and opened the palm up, holding it gently while her other hand went to a little tube and scooped up a salty-smelling goo.

"For conductivity." she explained as she rubbed it just barely in his tough skin. "Be grateful it's not an EEG, otherwise I'd have to rub this stuff into your scalp. You'd look like a punk that got lost in the rain." she laughed, but it died quickly as the Soldier frowned and shifted in his seat.

Then she took two of the straps and wrapped one around his index, another around his middle finger, and turned his palm back down. She clicked the machine on and it beeped in confirmation, beginning a reading of his skin and what was going on underneath.

In plain terms it was a rudimentary lie detector, meant to scan for stress and some primitive emotions. Maybe he knew that or he didn't, but she could tell she had to work him into it, calm him down before she could get an accurate reading of what moved him.

"Do you know what time it is?"

"You have a watch." he grunted, looking at the worn leather strap around her wrist.

"Yes, but do you know?" she smiled.

"0803 hours."

"Yes. Do you know where we are?"

"Headquarters Alpha 3."

"Good. Do you know what day of the week it is?"

"No."

"Did you sleep last night?"

"Yes."

"Did you have any dreams?"

"No." he said with a sardonic smile. The line on the monitor moved ever-so-slightly, but it could just be a reaction of their tiff about it the other day. Or, he was lying to her again.

They spent the rest of their session with him strapped up to it while she made use of a couple of boxes and the little things inside. With eyes closed, he had to guess what she placed between his fingers: a piece of velvet, silk, a pocket watch, a cufflink, a snow globe.

The edge that separated the Asset from whoever he was before was smudged only so slightly, by necessity, the way it was with all the other soldiers in the program — they could still talk, after all, and read and write, and still employ the complexities of hand-to-hand and armed combat, all things they learned in a past life and used now for Hydra's ends. What made her soldier the best was how sharp that edge was, how steady — until it wasn't.

He retained good coordination, if his finely drawn clock was anything to go by, a steadiness that an unbalanced brain would have found difficult. They had tried, with past soldiers, to split the two brain hemispheres physically, severing the membrane that bridged between them in an effort to isolate the old soldier from the new.

The right hemisphere housed contextual perception and feeling, while the left was honed and focused and precise. They even grew to slightly different sizes, in parts, even though the skull that covers them is evenly shaped. It remained in mainstream medicine a mystery, one that Hydra explored with relish.

But all that resulted from their experimental surgeries were monstrous malfunctions. As it turned out, the left hemisphere dominated most of the body even when separated, and Hydra's soldiers were left imprisoned in the right brain, at best controlling one arm and some eyesight.

Removing the whole left hemisphere also didn't yield any improvements, even after recalibrating what remained. There were even more extreme experiments suggested, but they were deemed too damaging to put the soldiers through, too harmful for staff morale, and too uncertain in their results.

It was clear that a successful subject had to keep all his faculties, all the useful memories in whatever form, while imposing the dominance of the right hemisphere over the left. In a way, the Soldier had been there all along, growing with the unwitting owner of that body, learning, judging for himself and reaching, inevitably, different conclusions.

There always was something slightly more sinister in the right hemisphere, which only emerged when it was freed from the left, or when the left was in a dream state and its control dropped. So it was clear which side Hydra drew its soldiers from, when it freed that part of them with their infernal brain-machines.

The wavering of that edge also explained why her Soldier had such excellent memory, remembering even obscure European countries well, but also their capitals, which Hydra never saw fit to teach him. And as she went through more little things that stood out against the strictures of their base and his missions, it emerged that, though steady, the line that separated her Soldier from someone else was kept at his convenience.

The man underneath was generously lending his memories of what fancy little cufflinks and snow globes felt like, just so the Soldier who had never seen them before could give the right answers. But what she needed to figure out was how much of the control was the Soldier's intention, and how much was unconscious reflex. If the man aimed to sabotage his missions, would the Soldier even know? Worse, if he wasn't aware of anyone else sharing his brain, could he really control him?

Would he want to?

For Hydra, her mission was simple: root out the part that dissents, make it submit. They were too focused on efficiency to know what they were truly asking for. They had no idea how bad it could get, or how good...

"That's enough for now. You can open your eyes while I get the next batch, we're almost done. This last bit is just some food tests."

"As long as it's not from the mess hall."

She was halfway to the sink, a small wooden crate in her hands, when she started laughing. "I promise it's not. So it's true what they say? Way to a man's heart..."

"Is through his rib cage."

Her laughter rang through again, but he kept his eyes straight ahead, focusing on the sound of her running her hands under the water, arranging things on a plate, and wiping her hands dry on the threadbare cloth that hung there.

"Close your eyes now." she spoke as she stepped closer from behind. The plate clinked as it met the metallic table, right by his hand, and he smelled and felt the heat of her as she stood right in front of him.

"I'll give you some things to taste, and you just tell me what they are. And they're all pretty soft. Alright? First one. Open..."

Something was nagging him from the back of his brain again, jeering at him for the childish position he was in, but he couldn't think of anything to feel ashamed over.

"Strawberry."

"Good. Now, swallow and... again..."

"Grapes."

"That's right. This next one is a bit, well... Just open and tell me."

He bit into a soft and shapeless thing that tasted like, if anything, a green paste. "I don't know what this is."

"Avocado. Maybe you've never had it before. Better make a wish, then."

"What?"

"Never mind. Open for me again..."

"Mint?"

"Yes, that's a mint leaf. It's perfectly safe, you can swallow. Now, this one will come in a spoon, so open wide." She let the cloying thing slip on his tongue and the taste spread in his mouth in a way that was familiar but unusual.

"Tastes like... roses."

"Yes, that's rose petal jam. If the Director only knew what I spent my funding on, spoiling you..." she giggled, but it died quickly as he kept frightfully still and his jaw tensed. From the corner of her eye she saw the GSR give an angry twitch.

"Right, one more and we're done. Open, and tell m—"

"Plums."

[theboywantscoffee]

The Handler is really a fascinating character to me as is her dynamic with Five and how alike they are. Get ready because I’m gonna go on a tangent about them.

I think it goes without saying that in many ways The Handler and Five are very similar people. They’re both pragmatic, goal orientated, cold, and quite simply, both willing to do absolutely anything needed to achieve what they want despite the repercussions others might face at their expense. They both lack a significant level of humanity, something that clearly is a requirement  to be able to do the work they do/did at the Commission. They are constantly at a battle of wits  and attempting to one up the other, both proving to be a formidable foil to the other consistently throughout the show. 

Where things start to contrast between the two is how they grew to be the people they are now. With Five, well, we know why he is the way he is. Five isn’t simply just a product of his childhood. Yes, he still retains a good level of characteristics from his youth into adulthood (arrogant, brash, sees himself as better than everyone else) but Five ultimately was sculpted into the man he is today due to his time subjected to the apocalypse and then shortly after, the Commission. 

The apocalypse did a number on Five. It isolated him for over four decades. It tore layer after layer of humanity away from him until he was left so distanced from other people that segueing into becoming an assassin was like second nature. It forced him to become entirely dependent on himself for survival in every aspect of the word. Physically, of course, he had to take care of all his basic survival needs; food, water, shelter, first aid, etc. Mentally and emotionally? He created a whole ‘nother person in the form of a mannequin to help him retain any semblance of either of those things. It damaged Five so deeply that afterwards he was left almost entirely incapable of empathy (key word, almost), unable to ask others for help/acknowledge he needs help, and able to see assassination as a reasonable means to justify an end. 

Five was left broken by the apocalypse. He is a product of it. And after going through that traumatic ordeal, he was offered a way out but only through accepting employment at the organization that sat by and allowed his suffering to go on for decades. (I’d love to go into the body modifications/DNA manipulation but that isn’t canon compliant for the show anyway (yet) so I won’t). He was transformed into the perfect killing machine. He took the lives of anyone and everyone who stood out of line by the Commission’s standards. Many who I’m sure weren’t actually bad people (ex, Lila’s parents), but because they were deemed irregularities in the timeline (or they were someone who The Handler could benefit from their death, ex Lila’s parents), they had to go. One doesn’t complete a task like that regularly without lacking a level of morality or connection to fellow humankind. 

But The Handler? We don’t really know her back story at all, so perhaps this is going out on a limb here, but I can at the very least say that she did not go through what Five did. There is really no one in the series whose backstory can equate to Five’s. And while I am not entirely excusing Five for being a shitty person sometimes, he and The Handler are very different in the fact that while he was sculpted into one, I think The Handler was just born an awful, monstrous human being. Actually worse than Five. And you know why?

The Handler isn’t even capable of love or empathy or putting anyone else before herself. We don’t see this at all, not even once. The Handler does things strictly for the benefit of herself and no one else. Even when her own self proclaimed daughter asks her if she ever loved her, The Handler doesn’t answer and then proceeds to murder her. Que sera, sera. (Whatever will be, will be). No remorse. No regret. Nothing.

Five, for all of his faults and flaws and uh, murder, still remains more connected to humanity than The Handler. Despite everything he has experienced, everything he has lost, he still has an inkling of heart that’s still beating for others left in him. Because Five still does love and care for people - his entire life purpose is to keep those people, his family, safe and alive, even at the expense of his own happiness and life. Five puts his family before himself every episode, every damn step of the way. He survives 40+ years alone and then works as an assassin for an unspoken measurement of time, all to save his family. 

The Handler throws up the front of being a people person and charming. And she does it really damn well. But in reality she is not morally gray. She doesn’t do some good things and some awful things. She is just all around horrible. She employs Five, again, to work for the organization that tore so much away from him. She dangles the idea of a new body before him, gives him a suit with the claim, “clothing make the man, Five,” as if he isn’t something to be taken seriously in his current physical state, as if he still isn’t the man who survived a lifetime in the end of the world and becoming an assassin. She claims that Five owes her because she ‘saved him from a lifetime of being alone’, which in actuality she watched and allowed him to suffer exactly just that. (I have another meta on here about that scene in particular, which you can read HERE). She tricks Five into murdering the board so she can assume power, all under the guise of claiming to help him get his family back to 2019, only to then use him as a scapegoat in their assassination. She literally kills him (almost) and all of his siblings. She writes the kill order on Lila’s parents, lets Five kill them, and then kidnaps Lila all for her own benefit. She continuously lies to her, ultimately betrays her, and kills her too. She sees zero wrongness in kidnapping a disabled boy from his mother so she can transform him into her weapon just like she did Lila. There isn’t a single instance in the entirety of the show where The Handler shows even an ounce of regret, only shock and anger when things don’t go her way. She is power hungry, merciless, and quite possibly even deranged with how unemotive she is towards other human beings.

And one more thing I want to touch on with The Handler that is a bit of a controversial topic in the show - her handsey-ness with Five. Her unnecessary touching and closeness. I am a firm non believer of the idea many have that her and Five used to be involved romantically or physically in any way. I think it’s quite a reach to imagine Five trusting her whatsoever at any point during their time knowing one another. Five is observant as hell and smart - I just can’t see him ever having an ounce of trust in her, especially with again, how she blatantly admits to him when they first meet that the Commission has been watching him for some time. So no, I don’t think her creepy touches with him have anything to do with a former fling (even if Kate or Aidan play into it that way or claim they might have in the past - sorry, headcanon not accepted lol). 

I view her behavior as demeaning. I see it as her being condescending towards him, like, “Oh, see how you betrayed me and now look at how you fucked up. Small and weak and nothing to be taken seriously.” She treats him like the tiny child he has physically become and she does it to make him feel inferior and like he has no control of the situation he is in or his life. It’s a slap in the face, a reminder of what he has done to himself because he left the Commission, and she does it because she knows how much it bothers him to be perceived that way. Everything she does and says around Five, she does to make him feel small. 

All in all, I really do love The Handler. Do I love that she played a larger role in season 2 than Carmichael? Absolutely not. I don’t love what her character did for the writing or the plot of the show and how it backburnered a lot of things. I think they missed out greatly on a character who was already a fascinating antagonist to Five (Carmichael). However, Kate Walsh is an absolute delight to watch on screen. Her and Aidan have great chemistry and play off one another very well and their scenes are certainly some of my most favorite to watch. I think The Handler is an amazing villain and keeping her as a female as opposed to a male Jon Hamm esque actor as they originally were intending to do was a great idea IMO. I love a female bad ass, even if she is a villain. I’m sad we won’t see more of her purely because she is so fun to watch (and her wardrobe is utter goals) but I’m definitely ready to move on to the next set of antagonists for our favorite dysfunctional family.

[fandom-necromancer]

495. part 3

And now to the (not so) final part XD

Fandom: Detoit become human | Ship: Reed900 (Warning: Character death (one real, one not), posessed character)

part1   part2   part4

RK900 quickly accessed the situation. [Android, RK800, Connor, Deviant. Inferior model. Threat to the cause: high.] [Human, Male, Detective Gavin Reed. Threat to the cause: average.] [Human, Male, Alex Stenton. Threat to the cause: minimal.] He preconstructed how to kill them while they were still talking. Someone laughed. RK900 laughed, too. First the two humans, then the android. Easy.

He quickly stepped forward, grabbed the first human’s head and slammed it onto the table full force. Then, two steps more and he had the human detective in his grasp. A quick kick to the lower back and it was crashing face first into a wall. Then he dove for the android, ducked under the reflexive punch and grabbed the gun from the holster. He shot the technician, he shot the android and he-

He watched the groaning human. [Kill] It slowly got to all fours, blood flowing freely from nose and temple. RK900 kicked against the human’s sternum what made it roll onto its back and holding the location of impact. [Kill. Now.] The green eyes looked up to him. He could have been able to read their expression but it wasn’t necessary to the cause, so his programming denied it. [KILL. NOW.]

The RK900 shot. The human flinched at the sound and looked down. Then over to the wall that had been hit. [Motor malfunction.] The RK900 ran a self-diagnosis. Nines used the short time to look into Gavin’s eyes over his trembling hand on the gun. [No malfunction detected. Software instability^] The RK900 looked down on the human again. [Kill] The RK900 shot again. And again. And again. [Motor malfunction.] [No malfunction detected. Software instability^] [Motor malfunction.] [No malfunction detected. Software instability^] [Motor malfunction.] [No malfunction detected. Software instability^] The human had curled in on itself, hands pressed on its ears. As if that would help. The RK900 changed the pistol into his other hand and aimed again for vital spots. [KILL]

And he shot again. And again. And again. And- Click. Click. Click. The RK900 inspected his gun and found it empty. In just a hint of anger and… was this triumph? He threw the gun away together with these unnecessary emotions. There were other ways to kill. He got down on his knees, pressing his hand against the human’s throat and using the other to throw well calculated punches. Images of an unknown bedroom, of an unknown couch and an unknown apartment flashed the RK900’s mind. He felt foreign signals on his fingertips, the softness of hair, the warmness of skin, the moisture of lips. [Sensor malfunction] [No malfunction detected. Software instability^^] The RK900 wondered where all these malfunctions came from, he had only been active for a few minutes, there couldn’t be anything damaged yet. He would suspect these kinds of reactions only after years on the cause, after countless fights with obsolete deviants, after countless kills when he could retire to nothingness after a job well done. Not now. Not after he had only killed one.

‘Nines-‘ The struggle of the human under him was weak, no challenge to his superior strength, but still he shivered. He didn’t know why, there was only a word. A word that didn’t even made sense unless it was a na that didn’t even made sense. ‘Nines, please.’ The human was crying. Humans did that. It was confusing. What would expelling water from optical units even be of use? [Stop] [Kill] The RK900 had to swipe at its own eyes. His unused hand came back blue and he took some time analysing it. Thirium. Why was there Thirium coming from his-

A sudden kick to the abdomen caught the RK900 unprepared and he had to let go of the human. [Android, RK800, Connor, Deviant. Inferior model. Threat to the cause: high.] His preconstruction wasn’t fast enough to get him into a better position, so he only managed to throw a hit to a jaw before the android forcefully ripped out his pump. A counter appeared in the RK900’s vision and ticked down unforgivingly. With it his orders spiked in urgency.

[KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL]

But the RK800, the deviant, the traitor, the disappointment, held him down. And somehow the other android was at the same time furious and relieved as his time ran out.

00:00:00

‘State your name and mission.’ ‘I’m a RK900 unit and I am to exterminate all deviants.’ ‘Who gave you the order to do so?’ ‘Cyberlife AI android handler Amanda.’ ‘How long are you active now?’ ‘Two hours, thirteen minutes and fifty-two seconds.’ ‘See, asshole that’s why I told you to deactivate her for good.’ ‘I don’t understand the inquiry.’ ‘You weren’t asked, tin-can!’

The RK900 felt weirdly discorporate and ran a diagnosis. [Optical Sensors deactivated, actuator control disconnected.] Oh. ‘I can’t see.’ ‘Shut up!’ ‘Gavin, stop. He’s still my brother.’ ‘He killed you!’ ‘Well, I got better.’ ‘Phck off, plastic. He’s not your brother, he’s the thing he never wanted to be, because you made him come here.’ ‘Well, you were on board too!’ ‘Oh you-‘ ‘Gavin. Connor. We all want to get him back, okay. Calm down.’ ‘Don’t tell me to calm down, Eli, your damn AI did this.’ ‘And I’m immensely sorry. She was quarantined safely. I don’t know how she got free.’ ‘My objective is to kill all deviants.’ ‘Oh my god, toaster, no one asked you!’ ‘No, wait. Connor, activate his eyes, please.’ ‘What Eli, no!’

Suddenly there was light again and the RK900 scanned the room. [Android, RK800, Connor, Deviant. Inferior model. Threat to the cause: high.] [Human, Male, Detective Gavin Reed. Threat to the cause: average.] [Human, Male, Elijah Kamski. Threat to cause: undetermined.]

‘How did Amanda got free?’, Kamski asked the restrained RK900. [Don’t answer.] ‘My objective is to kill all deviants.’ ‘Wow, so you got the thing to list its orders, nice.’ The RK900 looked over to the other human, visibly bruised and bloodied. Re-evaluating…. [Human, Male, Detective Gavin Reed. Threat to the cause: minimal.] ‘No. Look! RK900 how can we effectively shut off Amanda?’ ‘My purpose is to kill all inferior deviants and I would do anything to accomplish this mission.’ The human Kamski was grinning at the human Reed. ‘What?’ ‘Your Nines is still in there. A complete machine RK900 would only answer to questions the way it deems necessary. A normal RK900 would have denied information. But he practically told us how to free him.’ ‘How?’, this time it was traitor Connor to ask. ‘He stated that his main cause was to eliminate deviants. That has to be still somewhere in Amanda’s programming. I will go try to find it and delete it. Maybe that would let her leave this RK900.’ ‘Can’t you just delete her?’ ‘She would remain in him. And I guess you want your android back, right? Good. See you in a bit.’ Re-evaluating… [Human, Male, Elijah Kamski. Threat to cause: high.]

‘I’ll go, too. I have to tell the other’s, Gavin. I mean, he did kill someone.’ ‘Asshole, that clearly wasn’t him!’ ‘I know. But they don’t.’ ‘Fine, I’ll babysit the murder-machine…’

The RK900 was left alone with the human Reed and tried to calculate his way out. There was no way escaping his confines when he had no control over his motors. Also, all his wireless connections were offline. There was just no way out. ‘Phck man, I’m sorry… if you’re in there. I… I should have listened to you, should’ve talked your brother out of it. I just… I was concerned for you, okay?’ ‘Amanda started my existence.’ ‘Hmm? What’s that supposed to mean?’ ‘Amanda initiated my protocols and I am to kill all deviants.’ ‘You trying to say it’s not my fault? Well, phck, it is. You freaked the hell out that should have been sign enough for me to put an end to it.’ ‘Deviants are overwhelmed by their emotions and the virus causes them to decide irrationally. That’s why they are inferior and need to be deactivated.’ ‘Yeah, but your decision wasn’t irrational, look at what happened.’

The RK900 was confused and detected an extreme amount of software instabilities. None of these answers had been willingly authorised. Some malfunction had caused them to appear.

‘Nines, I… I didn’t want this. And I only now understand what you are living with. That you could be so easily tripped over. Living with the constant fear of slipping back into it. I’m sorry for ever making fun of you like that. We… I assure you we’ll get you back. I owe you so much. And I… I need you, okay? I won’t let them deactivate you like all the other RK900’s before. I promise.’

Again, unprompted emotions rose to RK900’s mind and he angrily brushed them off. He didn’t need them. He needed a way out and as fast as possible. He spent the next hours calculating and pre-constructing only for it to fail every time. It was evening as human Kamski came back into the room eyeing him. ‘He isn’t back to normal, is he?’ Human Reed sighed. ‘Hey, toaster, what is the meaning of life?’ ‘To exterminate all deviants.’ ‘See? Nines would have said 42 with a very pained expression.’ Human Kamski sat down next to him, laying an arm over the other human. ‘I can’t do much more, Gav. I tried isolating the directive from Amanda, but her code is constantly changing. She is most likely deviant herself and hasn’t realised it. I can’t delete it without it popping up somewhere else.’ ‘So you just gonna throw him away, like the others?’ ‘We need to deactivate him, I’m sorry Gavin. He is too dangerous to be free. And I doubt he would be the Nines you knew.’ ‘That would be killing him, Eli!’ ‘Gavin, Amanda killed him already. There is nothing we can do.’ ‘I detected software instabilities I cannot patch or delete. Deviant androids are inferior.’ Both humans looked at the RK900 that had just slipped more sentences he hadn’t allowed to voice. ‘Oh hell. Of course. Eli, I don’t know if it works, but I have a plan!’ Human Reed jumped up and pulled human Kamski after him.

They reappeared after two hours, rolling in a ST300 android and connecting it to the same computer the RK900 was linked to. ‘RK900, we’ll transmit you into this new body as a prison. Feel free to scan it, you wouldn’t be able to follow your prime directive in this body, is that correct?’ ‘That is correct’, the RK900 answered by himself for once. ‘This android is not adapted for military use.’ ‘Perfect. Transfer starts… now!’

The RK900 felt how the connection opened and pulled at his programming. But the human’s plan was of no use. He could resist it easily. He would stay in this body. He was built to resist exactly this procedure of interfacing. Suddenly there was a storm of software instabilities and he felt something entering the connection. But it was nothing that belonged to him, nothing… important to the cause. What were they doing? Until suddenly there was peace. As if there had been a hidden turmoil he hadn’t realised until now. Next to him the ST300 woke up and immediately ran towards human Reed. ‘Gavin? Are you alright? I… I was terrified, I… Oh God I killed Connor. I nearly killed you! I killed the technician! I-‘ ‘Shhh, it’s alright, Nines. Everything’s good now. Shhh.’ The human’s exchanged a knowing look over the shoulder of the weaker android. ‘Eli, you will phcking delete Amanda. You will phcking delete everything that’s on this damn RK900’s hard drive and you will get my love back into his own body, understood?’ ‘Of course, Gav!’

[Mission failed.] It flashed over the RK900’s HUD before he was deleted, but it happened without emotion. Emotions were inferior to logic.

[mst3kproject]

The Corpse Grinders

This movie was directed by Ted V. Mikels, who did the same job on Girl in Gold Boots, and was written by Arch Hall Sr., who did the same job on Eegah!.  Those were two of the sleazier and more misogynistic entries in Moon 13’s big ol’ vault of Kingachrome vials, so let’s prepare ourselves.  Another warning sign is how the title card is literally cut out and glued on the film there.  This isn’t just gonna be slimy, it’s gonna be cheap.

I’m not sure I can write a normal plot summary of this movie because that would make it sound far too straightforward.  As with The Astro-Zombies, we seem to have several beginnings, all of them for unrelated movies.  First we’ve got a couple who are suddenly attacked by their cat.  Then we’ve got a gravedigger grumbling that a guy named Landau owes him money.  Then we’re at the Lotus Cat Food company, where Landau is complaining that he needs more product.  Then we’re at a hospital, where a doctor named Howard and a nurse named Angie are also getting attacked by a cat.

Even when I write it out like that, you can kind of see where this is going – the cat food company is buying bodies from the gravedigger, and as a result the cats are developing a taste for human flesh and attacking their owners.  In the movie itself, however, it’s still less clear than that, because all these scenes focus on things that are beside that point.  The scene with the gravedigger is more about his fractured relationship with his wife, who is mentally ill and obsessed with her doll, than about what he’s up to.  The scene at Lotus is a showcase of the disabled weirdos Landau employs.  The bit at the hospital is about Howard’s drinking and his affair with Angie.

Anyway, yeah, Landau and his pal Maltby load the corpses into their rape van and probably molest them before feeding them into a ridiculous contraption that somewhat resembles an old, rusty version of the Teletubbies’ tubby custard machine.  When the local graveyard runs dry, Landau starts killing his employees and random homeless people.  Howard and Angie investigate.  There’s a detective with a mustache hanging around watching things and he looks so much like Howard that I was forty minutes into the movie before I was sure they were two different people.

Like the other Ted V. Mikels movies I’ve seen, this one is dark and out of focus and never makes a whole lot of sense.  The actors are bad, weird editing choices are made, and only one of the cast – Sanford Mitchell as Landau – looks like he’s having any fun.  The camera focuses on women dressing, undressing, and lounging around in their underwear, rather on things that might develop the plot.  The nearest thing to a special effect is a shot of Howard pulling chicken gizzards out of what may be an actual taxidermied cat.  There’s only one mildly amusing joke in the entire movie, which is the ad on the wall of Landau’s office: Lotus Cat Food, for cats who like people! Pity you can barely read it.

The levels on which the whole thing is ridiculous are many and varied.  Landau thinks he’s gonna get rich selling cat food?  The cheapest way to get meat for it is to buy human corpses?  A taste of the result makes eight-pound cats attack hundred and fifty pound humans? The stuff I feed my cat claims to be mostly turkey and giblets but I’m quite sure if she ever saw a real turkey she’d go right up the nearest tree and howl until I got her down.  Why hunt your own food when you can pester the humans until we give you some?  Isn’t that the whole reason evolution gave us thumbs – so we could open cans of cat food?

The Corpse Grinders isn’t even really sure what’s supposed to be its major source of fear.  Is it the cats turning on their owners?  If so, it’s pretty poorly presented, because we don’t get to see the bond between human and animal before we get the attacks.  Is it the fact that they’re digging up corpses?  If that’s so, we really needed to see people reacting to the raiding of the graveyard and not knowing what’s become of their loved ones’ remains.  Is it how Landau regards human beings as so disposable?  The movie should have spent less time making fun of the ill and disabled, then. Is it Landau’s crony feeling up the bodies?  This only happens once.  Is it the reminder that we are, in the end, made of meat?  This has been used to horrifying effect in many films, but it just never works here.  The Corpse Grinders throws a number of ostensibly awful things at us, but never has the focus required to make us feel any real disgust or horror.

All we’re left with, then, is a really bad movie made by people who obviously hate cats.  In several scenes a cat is supposed to be attacking somebody, but it’s clear that what’s actually going on is the ‘victim’ holding the cat against him- or herself while it struggles to get away.  The only cat attack scene that doesn’t involve obvious cruelty is the one where the cats move in to eat Landau’s body at the end – this seems to have been accomplished by putting cat treats or catnip on the actor’s chest.  I really hope the taxidermy cat in the autopsy scene was one they found at a garage sale or something, rather than being killed and preserved for the movie.

Not only does the movie mistreat its actual cats, the script insults them, too.  At several points we’re told that so-and-so adored her cat (it’s always a woman) only for the ungrateful beast to turn on her.  That does mean there’s a little bit of food for thought in this movie, because you quickly realize it had to be about cats.  You couldn’t make this movie about dogs, because people and dogs have a totally different relationship.

There’s a bit where Howard reads from a book that even domestic cats are ‘half-savage’ and that we don’t own them, they own us. Anybody who actually has a cat, including myself, would agree with this – a dog is a pet, while a cat is a room-mate. If all the humans magically vanished, dogs seem like they would probably wither away and die while cats would get along just fine.  Like most things we all kind of know without remembering where we learned them, this isn’t actually true in the real world: both dogs and cats can survive in the wild much better than we’d expect, but both prefer to seek out human help if they can find it.  But we do not trust cats, and that’s what this movie plays on.  We would have a hard time believing our dogs would suddenly turn on us, but our cats? They do it all the time, as soon as they’re tired of having their tummies rubbed.

The other reason this movie has to be about cats is because dogs would be expensive.  Dogs can be pretty big and could easily hurt somebody, so a movie in which dogs turn on their masters would require trained animals, their handlers, and a ton of insurance.  Cats are small enough that if you’re an asshole you can hold them down or throw them around.  I guess you could use only small dogs, but it might be hard to take the movie seriously when somebody’s getting their toes viciously gnawed off by a miniature schnauzer.

The Corpse Grinders is also about how we treat the dead, the homeless, and the disabled – three categories of humans that society would rather push under the rug and forget about.  It’s not the first to explore the intersection of these categories, either. In a sense, this is a Burke and Hare movie.  If you haven’t heard of Burke and Hare, they were a couple of landlords in early 19th century Ediburgh who made some money by selling the corpses of their dead tenants to the university medical school to dissect.  Eventually it occurred to them that they didn’t need to wait for their victims to die on their own.  They’ve been the subject of several movies, themselves, ranging from outright horror to dark comedy, and The Corpse Grinders follows the same basic premise.  When you’re already selling the dead, it’s a small step to the almost dead, and from there to the merely unwanted.

Almost all of Landau’s victims fall into this category.  There’s his disabled employees, who work for him because ‘nobody else will hire them’. There’s the homeless drunks. There’s the gravedigger and his wife, an isolated and ill couple who don’t appear to have any friends.  He knows to pick victims like these because his first victim, the cat food company’s financial backer, was missed, and it’s still causing him trouble after all this time.  People like one-legged Tessie, or the gravedigger’s wife, have no support system. The fact that nobody even notices they’re gone ought to be just as horrifying as their fate.

Not that this is actual social commentary on the movie’s part.  I don’t think even the stuff about cat-human relationships was intended to make us think. The film-makers just don’t like cats. Even when it shows us Landau’s victims, its logic is the same as his: nobody wants these people, nobody will care if they’re gone.  The setup in which we meet people like Willie, Tessie, and the Gravedigger’s wife is mostly to show us why nobody wants them, rather than trying to make their deaths into tragedies. Mikels and Hall Sr. don’t seem to like people any better than they like cats.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go hug my cat and tell her she’s a pretty girl.  She’ll try to eat me, but it’s just her way of telling me she loves me too.

[maximusod]

Tempest

So I sometimes write…not often tho. This is just a quick background written for an OC super robot of mine (who lives in my own world). I’m currently also typing out Demmy’s (Google Docs certainly helps when you’re out and about with ideas). I’m mostly posting for myself than anything, I don’t expect anyone to actually read it. Also, don't know how to hide text, sorry.

Tempest, The Raging Storm

Height – 60’ Weight – 50 tonnes

Speed, ground – 200mph, air – 350mph

Armor – Titanium tungsten alloy

Weapons – Thundercrack, configurable staff with 3 blades on each end that can move and rotate

Core – Arc-3 “Eureka” Reactor

Equipment – 10TK “Thunderstruck” Turbines, Vortex Thrusters

Nation of Origin – Carsana

Abilities – Generate massive amounts of electricity, which can then be channeled at objects or opponents, either thru his fists, or via the staff. Able to cause a massive charge in the air, creating thunderstorms, as well as strong magnetic currents in metals. Can also use the electricity to superheat metals, and weld them together, as well as start fires.

Personality

When he first came online, Tempest had no real personality to speak of. Over the years, however, he has become bitter with humanity and has developed temperament issues. After the incident in Carsana, he slowly became arrogant, stubborn, and prideful during his travels. He is both quick to insult, as well as to anger. While deep in his programming is still an urge to help and protect innocent people, his experiences has caused him to second guess every person he meets and think the worst of them. It helps him to bypass that part of the programming, seeing it as no one is innocent. Tempest now takes a great pride in his ability to rely on no one but himself, and has completely isolated himself from people in terms of emotional and social ties. While he has some spark of humor, it ends up being just inside jokes with himself since he doesn’t share his thoughts with anyone. However, this slowly changes over time after Demmy joins his travels.

History

Built to defend the capital from invading forces and giant monsters, Tempest came to life after many years and countless resources were poured into the project. While the nation of Carsana was remote enough to have minimal chance of invasions, it still happened to the outlying areas due to their valuable resources. Also being located in a mountain area lead to having its share of attacks from various giant creatures, whether over territory disputes or food. While they had a fairly large wall to help keep things out, fighting off threats was often incredibly costly. When Tempest came online, there was much celebration at the potential lives to be saved.

It was decided that Tempest would be built with an AI in order for him to be able to be launched immediately for any threat, instead of relying on a pilot that might not be able to get to the mech right away or possibly could be ill. His AI was tailored with the simple parameters of protecting the nation first and foremost, from any threats. Often his mere presence was enough to deter a confrontation. While most civilians enjoyed the new safety provided by the large mech, a few concerns were brought up about using an AI, and it was insisted a safety precaution would be installed in case the AI ran errant. The engineers installed an EMP device into Tempest, and used a remote for detonation to be carried by one of the engineers. If Tempest was to go out of the 5 mile range of the remote, it would set off the EMP, wiping his systems and shutting him down. The remote could also be manually activated in case of emergency.

When Tempest realized what had happened, his trust in them was beginning to be questioned. Eventually Tempest started to loathe the tiny meatbags for having control over him, even tho he was more powerful than them. Soon, the humans as well started to keep a tighter rein on the mech, putting him in restraints while not out on a mission. After a few years, and a growing resentment toward the people who had created him, Tempest began looking for ways to escape his handlers.

One day, during a maintenance routine, the engineer with the remote was up on a catwalk with several others. While they were doing a check on Tempest’s weapons, the remote was accidentally knocked off the catwalk. It survived the fall, however there was a stare-down between Tempest and the engineers, both realizing that now was a moment that could lead to either disaster or freedom, depending on the point-of-view. After a silent moment, the engineer made a dash for the ladder off of the catwalk to get to the remote, while Tempest tried to break free of his restraints. The engineer made it down the ladder just as Tempest broke free of the bond. With a roar, his massive metal fist came down on the remote just as his handler had reached it. The crashing boom echoed thru the city, and when the dust settled, all that was left was some scrap metal and a blood smear. It was the first time Tempest had killed a human, and in it, he felt a sense of freedom. No longer under the threat of the remote, the mech proceeded to break free of the rest of his restraints and ransack the facility.

The city was soon thrown into chaos as the rampaging mech took out his rage on the hapless capital, mainly focused on the military force. While he had no love for humans in him, he still refused to directly harm civilians who had no real say in what had happened to him. In the end, Tempest left the city, leaving nearly a third of it on fire and destroyed. He never looked back.

For several years, Tempest traveled across the various countries, soon becoming known as the Raging Storm in other nations due to the wake of destruction he often left in his trail. Many times, Tempest challenged others, constantly trying to prove he was too powerful to be controlled ever again. Most backed down from his challenge, however it also came at a price as Tempest usually demanded something in lieu of the challenge, such as oil, metals or even information. However, it wasn’t just human civilization that felt his power, as he often also sought out other creatures to test his mettle against; the larger the better. This even included an occasional dragon. However, Tempest made a deadly mistake when he killed a certain dragon, not realizing it was still a young drake. Since then, the mother, a First-Born Dragon named SsarKoth, had been hunting the mech down in vengeance, the two having clashed on rare occasions, but always ending in a stalemate, or the mech having to retreat from the determined dragon. The mech refused to make amends for what had been done, having become incredibly arrogant over the years, and stubborn beyond words.

Sometime, during his travels thru a forested area, he ran across a young girl. At first, Tempest didn’t give it any thought, just another human in a world running amok with them. However, he realized the girl was following him, and soon he became annoyed by his constant companion, noticing that she was constantly watching from somewhere nearby. After a couple of days of this, he attempted to confront her, tho unsure about the situation as she appeared to have no fear of him, which he took at first for being foolhardy. When he threatened her, however, he quickly realized that it was him who was foolhardy.

She revealed herself to be Yggsil, a name that Tempest had heard before but wasn’t familiar with. Her form changed to that of a fierce bird warrior, and he quickly found himself in a fight for his life against the powerful being. She defeated him with raw power, but even then, he still wouldn’t let his pride admit to the loss. That was when he found out why he had heard of the name: she was the Goddess of Balance and Justice that the organics worshipped, tho at the time, Tempest didn’t believe such a being could exist. Because Tempest continued on his destructive path against other beings after the events in his home city, Yggsil saw that the mech couldn’t let go of his hatred against humans, and continued to take it out on people who had nothing to do with his situation. In order to force him to work with humans, she cursed him to have a cockpit, and that none of his equipment or weapons would work, and that his strength would be nearly useless, unless there was a pilot in the seat. And so she left the mech, battered and broken, to fend for himself in a world that had no love for him, nor he for it.

For several days, Tempest wandered around, avoiding cities and populated areas, realizing he could no longer defend himself. Soon tho, SsarKoth found him once again, and the fight had become completely one-sided between the two. For the first time, the mech knew fear. Fighting was no longer an option for Tempest, and quickly learned what it must’ve felt like for the humans who fell before him in an uneven power match. The battle ended with the mech toppling off of a cliff into the ocean and disappearing into the waves below. It was quite some time before he surfaced again on a beach far away from where he had started. He had no desire to move, and laid there, going offline.

Tempest awoke to an odd sensation, feeling something rummaging around inside of him, specifically inside of his new cockpit. As he was getting up, a small human came tumbling out of his open door, surprising both it and the mech. From their back, the human female looked up at the gigantic mech towering over her, looking perturbed. There was an awkward moment, when the girl realized that the mech wasn’t just a regular machine. While Tempest had a series of nasty choice words for her, she soon showed that her vocabulary was equal to his in terms of insults. After a long series of verbal bouts with each other, the human realized there was something wrong with the mech. Introducing herself as Demetria, or Demmy for short, she tried to pry some info from him. Tempest eventually relented, realizing this might be his best chance to survive the curse. He’d hoped that he would be able to control her, but soon found out that she was just as stubborn as him. He needed a pilot, and she needed a means to get away.

The two eventually made a strained pact with each other to help the other. Over time, it developed into a friendship deep enough that the two were never seen without each other. They were a couple of misfits in a huge world rife with magic and technology.