The Weapon Cyborg

The deadly terror was a woman.

He raised a brow, tilted his head to the side, and watched on as various lights of different colors started to turn on in the tube, tiny ones, like buttons. It looked like the lining in the tube thing was a cushion? Only cushion he'd ever seen that wasn't hard as stone was the Gun Lord of the East's throne.

His eyes didn't stay on the tube for very long though, as the draw of the Immortal caught his eyes. A woman, but not a woman. Tall, fit, lean, strong. He could see her muscles, her abs, her strong-yet-feminine shoulders, the thickness of her legs and tightness of her waist. But as the mist faded and the tube lights finished turning on, he gasped.

The Immortal's skin was the color of night sky, with layers of curving, sleek armor coming off of her limbs. The armor looked more like proper metal, like steel, and it looked... pretty, like, whoever made it wanted the pieces of armor to look elegant and slick. She had shoulder pads of the strange metal jutting out of her shoulder, curved with a spike that rounded back, all smooth and shiny. The same with her wrists too. Gauntlets! Or wrist guards, something that left her black hands exposed.

It was the same for her legs, layers of the curved armor covering the outer thigh of each leg, curving downward, with a spike on each curving downward as well, always with slick, smooth shapes. Kneepads of metal as well, with a spike pointing outward and up, like a snake fang. She had shin guards, the dark silver wrapping them, and a few spikes sticking toward their outside. No shoes though. He could see her toes, black, the same as her hands, her stomach, her neck, her breasts, her face.

Face! She had lips, a tint of navy against the night black of her skin. Why the armor of her shoulders, arms and legs did not cover more important areas like the chest or stomach, he did not know, but the passing thought faded as he stared on at her sharp chin, and the dark navy lips beneath her nose. The nose bridge raised into a slick, curving metal barrier that covered the Immortal's eyes. More than covered, it looked like it was a part of her upper head, dark silver flowing back into large spikes, covering where ears should have been, where hair should have been.

She was beautiful. It made no sense! The armor made no sense, and yet he could not stop staring at the slick machine. Solid. Sturdy. Stable. All the good things he could possibly imagine, the Immortal embodied. It was as if someone had taken a human woman, tall, lean, strong, dipped them into the night sky, and then grafted ornamental silver armor to their arms, legs, and the top of their head. Lines of a brighter silver ran up and down along her dark body in beautiful designs too, curving with the shape of her abs, her breasts, her legs and waist and all the beautiful muscles of a warrior woman. If she asked, she could be accepted as a member of the Silver Eyes, the body of a warrior and huntress and seductress.

Tumbles laughed, and slapped himself in the forehead. There was no use in arranging the words into a story in his mind, when he was going to die, trapped in a vault with an ancient, living war machine.

"Computer, report."

"Aaah!" He threw himself back and away from the glass, as the voice of the Immortal reached through the window as if it were not there. A woman's voice. A normal, perfectly normal sounding human voice.

"Catastrophic damage. Facility compromised. Emergency state 1-3-2-9 initiated."

"... 1-3-2-9. Seriously?" The Immortal of death walked up to the glass, and looked down at him. He thought. She had no eyes! He could not tell where she looked, as the sleek visor of dark silver covered her eyes completely, burying both her of eyes and her forehead in the beautiful metal before it slicked back into spikes curving over her head. "Hey, you, what the fuck happened? Who are you and where's Doctor Dovnitz?" Such a strange accent!

"I... I um... I'm Tumbles. I d-d-d-d... d-don't know who Doctor Dovnitz is."

"... Tumbles."

"Y-Yes ma'am."

"How about you give me your real name?"

"T-Tumbles is my real name. It was given to me after I became a man."

"... um, what?" The woman walked closer to the glass, and raised her hand. Oh by the sands, he'd offended her! He raised his arms up to defend himself, knowing full well it was pointless. If she wanted, she could destroy the planet. If she wanted, she could—tap tap, tap tap, tap tap. "The fuck are you talking about, when you became a man?" She tapped the glass with one of her fingers.

He lowered his arms, and raised both brows as he stared at the beautiful machine.

"M-My adult name... Tumbles. I, I um... I suppose you wouldn't know, great Immortal, if the world did different things, before the great war."

"Great war? What? The fucking wa—Computer! Report on Leblanc war."

"Please narrow query."

"Oh I don't know, how it fucking ended? Because there's a civilian fucker in this highly secret R&D center looking at me like I'm one of the four horseman, and talking about the great war. Fill in the fucking blanks!"

"Last report was on August 12th, 2092. State of Leblanc war unknown."

"Hmm, a year after I went under. Any other Immortals woken up?"

"Last report indicates no other Immortals have been deployed."

"Enough with this last report shit, get me Comms!"

"Intel network is down, Immortal Mark 8."

The Immortal marched back and forth in front of the glass, pacing like an angry wife waiting for her idiot husband to come home so she could kill him.

"Computer, how long since the last report?"

"It has been 1274 years, five months, and thirteen days since the last report."

The machine of death stopped, turned, and stared at him. This time he could tell, because her body went still with her visor aimed at him, her breathing stopped, and her shaking fists paralyzed at her sides like funeral stones.

"... w... what?" she said.

She didn't know. Despite the skin of onyx and the divine metals on her limbs and head, he recognized the body language of a human, a normal person, a woman. She reached out, put both hands on the glass, and let her head droop down between her arms and shoulders.

Through it all, Tumbles stared at her, trembling, unable to get up, on his ass and weight behind him on his palms. She didn't know, and he woke her up. Maybe the computer — whatever that was — wasn't lying about these Immortals. They were just humans, like him, turned into weapons? And... and somehow, she'd been sleeping all this time?

"... I'm sorry," he said.

Her head came up, and pointed in his direction, her hands still pressed to the glass as she leaned against it. No eyes, but she did have a mouth and nose, and he could see emotions through them, if only a little of what the eyes normally held.

"The fuck are you sorry for?"

"I, I um... I fell down here, from the sands. Cave in. This, this um... computer? It... it says I'm trapped, that... that we're trapped. And um, it said... I could revive you." He wasn't sure what 'fuck' meant, and at this point, he was afraid to ask.

"... then I should be thanking you."

"Thanking me!?"

"Yeah. R&D protocol, no actively researched weapon or device can come out of lock down without human interference, even after the Historics date has passed. That includes Immortals in cryo. Of course, we were good to go, bug free by the time the war started, with years of tests and... whatever, doesn't fucking matter. We went under until they were sure there were no issues, and I guess the Leblanc war got out of hand during that time... immensely. Christ, over a thousand years? Really?"

"... I... I have only... um, Computer, to tell me if that's true."

Sighing and grinding her teeth — her tongue was navy like her lips, her teeth silver — she tapped the side of her head, underneath one of the spikes where her ear should have been. "Turning on my AR. Maybe we can confirm."

"AR?"

"Augmented Reality. I guess you're only familiar with the sunglasses or contact lenses version. Ha, who the fuck am I kidding, a thousand years? You probably have better shit now."

"... sunglasses? Contact lenses?"

"What? Seriously? Your English not the best or something? Eh, sorry if that's mean. I'm guessing you're Indian?"

He looked around, down at himself, then back at her. "Indian?"

"Yeah... from India? Tan skin, white turban, black beard—I like the trim beard look by the way, very cute."

A compliment, from an Immortal! Cute! He wasn't sure what to make of that, other than to blush. A woman complimenting him was a marvelous thing to be treasured, even if it was from an ancient machine of doom.

"I... I don't know what India is."

"... seriously?"

"The, the um... the legends say, the great war led to the time of Reckoning. And... most... most of the world died in fire."

"... this day just keeps getting better and better. Ok, you know what? Instead of spoon feeding me just how fucked everything is, I'm getting us out of here. The Intel Network is down, and my AR is telling me jack shit."

"... Jack shit?"

"Back up and cover your eyes."

"What? Oh!" He scampered away back toward the door he came in from. It didn't open, more grinding sounds coming from it, and an eventual, depressing beep. Compromised entrance, of course.

As the Immortal drew back her hand, he covered his eyes, and turned his back to the glass. Predictably, the machine of death shattered it with a single punch. The sound was like thunder, but sharper, like thunder's angry little sister. Rain followed it, thousands of drops of rain, scattering around and dancing upon the metal floor and walls. Much of it hit him, but with distance and with hands covering his face, it fell off of him harmlessly, shards of glass becoming the new sand of their grave.

Or maybe not grave? She sounded convinced she could get them out. And, she was an Immortal, after all, and as he turned around, he jaw dropped at the sight of the shattered window. He hadn't realized how thick the glass was. So thick! By the sands, she'd be able to punch through a semi five-wheeler war machine!

She stepped into the room with him, and came up to him. Closer, and closer, until she was only inches from him.

She was beautiful. So close, his eyes couldn't help but wander, and look up and down the obsidian beauty and silver lines that highlighted her skin. The dark silver metal spikes and guarding plates of her limbs were a part of her, seamlessly connected to her onyx body. Such beautiful designs, bits of white highlighting edges of silver, and dozens of lines, flowing lines of different shades of silver running the curves of her body before joining the metal plates guarding her forearms, her shins and thighs, her shoulders, and her skull.

So close, he could see how the movement of her body looked natural, normal, as if she was soft, as if she wasn't a death machine from an ancient era. Her toes pushed aside the bits of glass without issue, both unharmed by the sharp edges, and yet bending with weight against the floor like normal toes would. Her chest rose and fell, and her movements caused her rather large breasts to shift lightly, their teardrop shapes pressing to her chest. So close! So close, he could see her navel, and lower, how the dark navy slit between her thighs was actually her sex.

Wait a minute.

"You're naked!"

"Oh god, I'm helping out a moron." She sighed, laughed, and reached out to pat the man on the arm. He flinched, and she went slower, chuckling again as her hands found the white cloth of his shoulder. She felt... warm, and alive. "Synthetic body and nano tech. Comes with a lot of perks, and a lot of functions of a normal human body."

"... I don't understand."

"It has to do with brain dissonance. Put a human brain into a synthetic body that doesn't have enough human features, it crashes, like a compu—you don't know what that is, apparently. Right, yeah, the person dies."

"S-So, this... this machine body is... close to human?"

"Exactly. I... I really shouldn't be telling you this, but according to you, the world's ended while I was asleep, so, fuck it. Look." She held out a hand to him, palm up. "Touch."

Gulping, no doubt loud enough for her to hear, he blinked up at her, and touched her palm. "It feels... like skin!"

"Yeah. Now, touch again." Her black skin started to shimmer and shine like stars against the night sky. It only took a second, but once she was done, he could see how her body's skin was now smoother, and harder looking. The subtle skin definition of knuckles, the lines in her palms, the shape of areola against breast, all went away, flattened and smoothed into a metal shine.

And when he touched it again, he gasped. It did feel like metal, like solid steel. And yet she closed and unclosed the palm, even as the metal skin told him it shouldn't be able to bend at all.

"Neat huh?"

"I... I uh... but why naked?"

"Got a problem with a naked woman?"

"N-No! No, you're... so... so..." Ok, think of the perfect word to compliment a very attractive death machine capable of destroying you with a flick of her finger. "Magnificent." Too much? Way too much. Ugh, such a bad storyteller Tumbles! Bad story, bad story. Wordy would laugh.

But she laughed, and let her skin return to normal. "Hard mode for combat, soft mode outside of combat. Hard mode is hard on the CNS, taxing, starts to hurt the nerves after a while. And I could wear clothes, but, the fuck do I care about people seeing me naked?"

"I... suppose you would have no worry for men trying to take advantage of you. You could destroy them easily."

She tilted her head to the side as she looked down at him, a few inches taller than him; not as much as the six inches he originally thought, but still. "No, I meant, most people aren't interested in fucking a synthetic that looks like she's made out of metal. You though, you got that glint in your eye like you've had a couple shots and you're trying to work up the nerve to ask a girl out."

"S-Shots!? I've never been shot. And ask a girl out? Out where?"

She erupted into laughter, and stumbled toward the door that failed to open, before pounding her palm against it a couple times. But not in attempt to open it, rather, because she couldn't stop laughing.

"Ok, I think I'm going through some sort of denial about my world being gone. You'd think I'd be sadder, right? But... I don't know, it's not hitting me. Maybe it will once we're top side." She looked over his shoulder at him, and grinned. "But, stick around, I like you."

"... you do?"

"Sure. Young looking man, very cute, saves me from over a thousand years of sleeping? Very Sleeping Beauty."

"... you are beautiful." Bad Tumbles! Bad! What is the matter with you? Just because she complimented herself, called herself sleeping beauty, is no reason for you to jump in and compliment her too! Arg, Wordy always told you your bad storytelling was going to get you into trouble. Tumbles couldn't help it! Not as he found himself staring at the machine of death's rather large, muscular butt.

And she laughed again. "Sleeping Beauty was a movie, a story. I just thought the comparison apt because you woke me up."

"... oh."

"That said, I'd be lying if I said I didn't waste a shit load of the military budget, demanding they put in a little extra work in cosmetics." She forced her fingers between the lines of the sliding door, and slipped her fingertips into the tiny crevice. "Not like they couldn't say no, weren't a lot of soldiers with my scores willing to participate in the experiment."

"C-Cosmetics?"

"Yeah, the color scheme, a little flair on the circuitry, the—you probably think it's body armor, heh." She dug her heels against the steel, and, started to force open the door. Her voice became labored with the struggle, arms shaking, body struggling to not slide. So, she was human, sort of. "Plus I got them to increase my bust a couple cup sizes. If I'm going to spend nigh eternity in a synthetic body, you're damn right I'm going to do it with a nice rack."

This woman! This machine. She didn't behave like a god. She didn't behave like some cold machine of death. She didn't behave like a legendary figure at all. She behaved like a rambunctious young woman! He didn't understand half the words she used, but from the way she moved, the way she talked, the way she looked over her shoulder at him and chuckled, before she got back to work, knowing full well he was staring at her, it was almost like she was flirting with him. But that made no sense! He was just a silly small man, and she was a machine of death! There was no way she could have been flirting with him. No, it was just his mind playing tricks on him. He was a young man, nineteen years old, his mind still in the clouded years. Wordy had told him when he was younger that he was a stupid boy, always staring at women, and he'd never get his mind out of the clouded years. He was right. Always was.

The door came open with a screech, and Tumbles sighed as he gestured out to the wall of rock that blocked the tunnel.

"Yeah, trouble." The Immortal reached up to her visor, and tapped on it a few times. Then a few times more. Then a few times more again, all as she looked around at the walls around them, and above them. "Looks like twenty feet of rock in the way, and... a hundred-feet-deep hole? How the fuck? This base was built in an empty field."

"The... the sand worms, they... churn the earth, the mountains, the sand, everything."

"A worm? How fucking big is a sand worm?"

"W-We don't know, we never see their ends. But, their heads and mouths—"

"Mouths!?"

"Yes, they're, um... maybe... their heads are maybe forty feet wide?"

"... sounds like shit out of Godzilla, holy fuck." Laughing, she started grabbing rocks, and throwing them into the room.

He stepped aside, and watched the tall woman grab enormous boulders, hundreds of pounds each, and throw them behind her. So strong. So utterly, ridiculously, wow strong. He stared on, jaw dropping, and she laughed at him whenever she glanced his way. The rocks crashed, shattered, split apart, and tore into the room behind them.

"Um, shouldn't you be careful? You might... destroy some of the things you—"

"Nah, this facility is dead. AR says all the equipment and their power sources are damaged or drained. Only thing running now is back-up maintenance power, bare minimum for some lights, some analytics, and cryo." Another rock flew past, shattering the tube the Immortal had stepped out of. Wordy would say it was a metaphor for leaving her old life beyond. Tumbles thought it was a waste of something they could have showed to others, or maybe sold.

She made good time, kicking aside smaller rock, throwing bigger ones, crushing some into powder right before his eyes. Combat mode, she said. So deadly! The legends weren't lying.

Eventually, with time, she got them outside the vault, or at least, to the doorway out into the cave. Nothing but rock, the avalanche blocking everything.

"Alright, get back into the observation room, Tumbles. You can watch, just keep most of your body behind the door, ok?"

"O... ok." He stepped back into the room, poked his head out, and watched.

Something came out of her wrist guard things, the silver armor she called circuitry. Lines, glowing lines that pierced the air, and his eyes squinted to fight the erupting light that came with them over her wrists. The weird lines were blue in color, almost white, and only as she moved forward slightly did he realize the lines were only visible because it was light hitting the dirt in the air, like the dingy cracks of home's walls letting in the sunrise.

The Immortal Mark 8 pointed both her hands forward, and unleashed Armageddon.

A high-pitched sound filled his ears, and he again had to cover them. But this time, the squealing noise was coming from the woman, not the door, and as the sound grew louder, so too did the lines of light she emitted. Like a sun rat calling for its mate, the sound was ear-piercing, but it was the sound of destroyed Earth that forced him to stare on. The weird lights increased in size twenty fold, and buried the path in the strange beams. The Immortal had her wrists pointed at an angle upward, so whatever she was doing, she was aiming it up on a slope.