3:57 PM

December 19th

Diana

I'd heard everything, I'd sensed moving bodies in the room where we'd fought Bladedaughter from a distance, in something more than just electricity. Then, when I came, they were speaking to him. Calling him Ripley. The Dogwhistler… and she had manipulated Alex into shooting Anabelle. A job I knew was offered to Ripley.

And he called them…

"The Dogwhistler is your girlfriend?" I scoffed, gun still held up at him. "How long have you known?"

"Diana… now is not the time." He spoke, mask still worn. "I have had… revelations I believe we should discuss."

"Like how you've lied to me for Founders know how long?" I held my shout back, a part of me still wanted to believe this was all some stupid misunderstanding. "I put myself on the line for your ass, I told everyone to believe you weren't up to something! I took responsibility for you. I was an idiot, I always have been. For trusting you… and so many others. I thought-!"

"The Infinite can assume human form." He said. "It spoke to The Bladefather the day we received our Implants."

My gun wavered from shock, but... I didn't care if that was the truth. He could tell me once he was in handcuffs.

"Fuck off, like you have an Implant to read right now other than the ones behind you." I kept my gun aimed at him. "How often have you lied to me these last few weeks, you knew about Sabrina, you knew about The Dogwhistler… which means you fucking knew about this whole thing from the start! And you told me you were hired to kill Anabelle and… has everything been a part of your plan, this… stupid mastermind idea of yours to get Implants for your mother?"

He looked away from me, a stutter to his steps as my finger tensed on the trigger. He spoke slowly as his voice contorted behind his emotionless mask. "Okay, yes I am aware I have lied to you about this… but I sincerely believe that-"

"Sincerely believe what?" Electricity sparked in my hands. "That you deserve a second chance? This entire thing could have been stopped way before it ever happened! You let this happen! Do you have any idea how many people died? Sabrina… she-"

"I'm sorry for your loss, but-"

"Always a 'but' with you." I seethed. "Power down your Shardware, you're coming with me."

His voice grew steely. "I can't let that happen."

"Or what?" My finger rested on my trigger. "You brought this upon yourself, all your lies, all the parts of you I thought were good only ever existed if it meant something to gain from all of it!"

"And what about you?" His voice darkened. "Would you not do any of what I did to save Anthony? Or imagine if it was Yvette… the difference is, I have the power to fix it. You rely on others to solve your problems. I'm still solving them for you, I called upon The Dogwhistler for aid when you wanted to help the others in spite of The Bladefather being around. This day has been… complicated, let's reconvene and discuss this when we're both of sound mind."

"Always going to reason when it's only to serve you, huh?" I bit my words as they came out out. "Is there any bit inside of you still human, Ripley? After all that the Personality Matrix did to you, or is everything I've seen just a front for what lies beneath, a soulless husk?"

Dreadwire, stepping out of the shadows, let his mask slide back as Ripley's rusted-iron eyes looked at me. They stirred with pleading inside of them. "Please, Diana… I've fucked up plenty, but dammit, I'm serious! It's… complicated, but The Bladefather… he connected to my mind and showed me things."

"You can tell me everything once you're in a jail cell." I wasn't going to fall for any more tricks today, no matter how much truth was in them.

Ripley sighed, agitation strung into his words. "I've… probably gotten a little in over my head the last month, but I- I'm still on your side. The things that happened here… they don't matter."

"Don't matter?" Thunder tensed in my mouth.

"Okay, that's not what I-"

"No, Ripley…" I laughed, I couldn't believe it took me this long for my silver eyes to reflect the truth of Ripley Donovick. "You're exactly right that it doesn't matter to you. I don't care which part of your fucked up mind it is, but… you really don't care about anything that doesn't serve you. You never have, all these people that died… they were just blue pigs to you. To me, they were coworkers, they were brave people that put their lives on the line for-"

"For a damn paycheck!" He shouted.

"And yet, you act like none of them will be missed. After all… didn't you do all those Personality Mods for a paycheck? On women who didn't know any better, on…"

"Don't say it." He warned.

"On Selene." I said it anyway. "And don't you dare say it was different, because it wasn't. You're not the only one with a fucked up life, not the only one needing money for something, needing… to protect someone."

"And what about the people we slaughtered on the way here, Muramasa?"

"They were hardly innocent." I was finished with this conversation.

Strangely, he laughed. "The old fool was right… it never is about ideals."

"What are you talking about?" I didn't let him out of my sights for one second.

He met my gaze, and there was an apology in there. "You know… I had something I wanted to give you, but I wasn't able to finish it by today."

"Ripley, stop talking in circles and put your-"

"Point of it…" He looked down, taking a deep breath before speaking softly. "I really liked working with you, Silvereye."

Then his mask shut on his face, all emotion erased under the guise of Dreadwire as his claws drenched with Golden light.

Electricity swarmed in from behind me.

Dreadwire

The Constellation, at it's simplest, was a swarm of drones identical to my Webcrawlers except they were variable in size, some larger and others smaller depending on their functions. What made them entirely distinct was the fact that neither me, nor Starlight directly needed to control them — albeit, Synchronization was possible. Instead, they received a feed directly from my Database.

They would receive information on everything I'd have gone through to get down here, what type of enemies I'd faced, where there bodies were and instructions I passively logged down to at every corner I'd passed. I'd purposefully been quick and frugal with my passage through the wards, refusing to directly loot Implants or Shardware unless necessary.

The main purpose of Constellation was effectively, to be a massive Vulture-like swarm to retrieve Shardware I'd found an interest in, to take their Implants and store it at specific retrieval points scattered around the city. Alternatively, they also possessed minor combat functionalities, intended to be used in conjunction with Starlight.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Twilight would do for now. And finally, they served one purpose in case of a worst-case scenario, each drone was slightly different, incorporating alternative Shardware in their makeup that had no direct usage in their function. Simply, because they served as living carriers of components to my Shardware — they served to repair me.

And right now, they swarmed in, nearly a hundred hand-sized vehicles of mass confusion and restoration. Diana let out a storm of electricity behind her, a time in which I moved under Hypermind Prime. She'd reacted quicker than I expected her to, but I was far superior in terms of speed.

No. I was simply far superior.

October 31st (Halloween)

Diamante and Topaz

"Honestly," Diamante chugged some beer in to his steel mouth as he turned to Topaz's question, "that's probably a dabacle many people been thinkin' about. Who would win between Dreadwire and Silvereye? It ain't as easy as saying one's better than the other, though both certainly have their shining graces in some areas and are dull as rust in others. In some ways, they're similar."

"Like the fact that they're both gratuitously mentally unstable?" Topaz snickered. "No, really, you think Dread's bad? You should have seen Diana when she had her fangs on his throat."

"She had her… what?" Diamante blinked.

"Getting side-tracked." Topaz waved off. "Continue as you were, Di."

"Right, so Dreadwire and Silvereye." Diamante sighed. "Where do we start off, right, Dreadwire's got something Silvereye's significantly lacking."

"An extra four arms?"

"Exactly." Diamante agreed with, much to Topaz's surprise. "No kidding, an extra two-pairs of limbs, especially ones with the reach he has… capable of manuevering him around like, well, a spider? She'll have a tough time shooting even a blur of him with how quick the guy moves. And she's a good shot, I know it cus' I am, yet I'm not going around claiming I can shoot the R0N1N."

Topaz stirred his drink. "You really comparing Dreadwire to the R0N1N?"

"Why not?" Diamante shrugged. "They're both careless with their money, for one."

Diana

He was stalling for time to get his drones down here. That thought, and so many others came crashing down on me all at once as metal insects crowded my vision, many aiming sharp fangs at me. The Warp Energy supplied by Quartz churned within my grasp as Gold, his stores were truly massive for me to feel so full of Energy when against Bladedaughter I was running low.

But my endurance for it had fell, significantly. Every strain of lightning dragged thin blades through my skin as I forked them into the buzzing hivemind of steel spiders, they fried and popped into embers but there were so many of them that I felt myself get torn up as they barraged through me.

I tore my senses away from them, they didn't matter. Ripley did, the Shadow Tendency drenched his movements amidst the swarming dots of gray steel, but brief flickers of movement caught my attention. He could hide his Warp Energy, but he couldn't hide the currents of electricity within him, even if this massive swarm was filling my senses with fog of disjointed currents.

My feet planted, I let the swarm razor past me, surface wounds that sealed up as I charged my body and suit with thunderous might. Dreadwire was doing something, his body flickering behind dots of curving steel that seemed centralized to him.

With a painful raise of my right hand, I wielded the Lightning Tendency in the very medium of it's name. Energetic Release sent blood bursting from my fingertips into my suit as a jolt of blue snapped through and forked forward like a tree of pure energy. Metal flaked with embers into a storm, and their fried forms shot out in a tempest of gray and black at Dreadwire's distant form.

We stood within a room of scattered metal, broken bits from the ground prior to our fight with Bladedaughter, small pieces of hers and the entirety of Heart Seeker's duplicate Shardware, the three bodies under the Dogwhistler's control, these annoying drones. All of it was a valuable resource to Ripley — to create new machinery like he'd always done, and find a way to overwhelm me as he finds my weaknesses.

But this room was far from my weakness. I may have been low on Energy when I fought Bladedaughter, but right now — he stood in my Electromagnetic Domain.

Through the thick charge in the air, the room hummed with static as scraps of his drones and shards of ruined bodies lifted and twisted into his direction. The faint golden accents of his body were my target, his blackened limbs would shred under my storm.

He stood still as his swarm turned against him, merely raising his hand as golden lights swam around him like fireflies. My storm of shards collapsed onto his body, as each firefly pulsed with a sharp eruption, an aura of magnetism that my rushing charge of debris… skirted away from. It was like a shotgun where every pellet danced around your target.

"Diana…" His voice was cold, dwelling with an urgency. "I was making metal float far before you did."

His dark form disappeared, but I felt a claw at my neck as the world twisted. My back pained as gazed up at Dreadwire and the roof, the six bands on his mask holding no emotion as he pinned me down, breath choked away as he only tightened. Then his Arachnodyne limbs speared through my arms, nailing me to the floor. Screaming, my eyes burned as electricity erupted through my skin and dragged angular streaks across his suit.

He was unphased. That mask emotionless as I… for some reason… couldn't get a hold of any of the electricity within him. It fled as soon as it reached him.

"You control electricity without understanding any of it's properties." He didn't even sound like he was taunting me, merely disappointed. I yelled, my body feeling weighted and heavy as Warp Energy scarred me, and only tickled him… because he was feeding it elsewhere.

The other two limbs of his transformed Arachnodyne stretched out, my eyes catching familiar chained blades connected to the tips of each limb, stabbing into the piles of metal around us. Discharging every zap I sent into him, he'd rendered my output useless… but he should be paining from this… how?

"Go to sleep, Diana. We'll talk about this later." Trickles of calm soothed into me, my eyes feeling heavier as less blood squeezed up my neck to my head under his steel grip.

"You bastard." I choked. "Did you really prepare for… even this?"

"I had to." He said, his voice quiet. "Even when I didn't want it."

I laughed, cutting off the current I sent out. Instead, I churned it within me like I was stirring a pot. It spiralled, that blazing inferno, through my bones and muscles into my blood, until it swept through the steel of my suit as the barrier between them faded. It was… a part of me.

Silvereye… whenever I donned this armor, people changed how they looked at me. And I changed how I looked beneath it.

As electricity fueled through its seams, I let it consume me — the steel. I let Ripley's command of becoming one with machine bite him in the ass. I was a human whose every cell ran on electricity... I was more machine than he ever was. The lightning sparked with my will, and his very touch upon me was a desecration of it.

Sparks burned into the talons gripping my neck, and it carried my essence. There was a distinct shift to his Energy as mine met it, a warning and retreat simultaneously.

"You've changed, that's not a Mutation." He whispered.

"So have you, Ripley. Nothing about you is because of your BUG. It's always been you." I laughed, as my suit flared with bands of electric lines around it, all according to the circular chips he'd given to me for fighting against Bladedaughter. They wrapped as a second set of muscles, infused with Fire and Spark as I forced his fingertips to loosen around my neck.

Not from telekinesis, but through the pure wrath of Warpcode I manifested.

"Fuck you, Donovick." My hands tore apart as I dragged them through the bladed tips of his Arachnodyne, keeping their shredded muscle and bent bone bandaged by a coiling magnetic wave. Then I grabbed his left arm, the one pinning me down, as I forced all of my psionic strength upon myself.

My body began to ascend, as I clasped my hands tighter around his limb until it dented. Rising into the air, I floated above him as he tried to wrestle the limb away from me, but I refused. This was what he wanted.

"Diana. Don't turn this fight into-" He was interrupted by a kick into his chest, his left limb tearing off from the elbow. His Arachnodyne skidded, as I looked down onto him.

"You don't even get to call me Diana right now." I held his left arm high for him to see my wreathe energy through it. The Shardware convulsed, plating bending as screws popped out. "Address me properly."

He looked as fearless as he always did under that mask, a detached visage that had grown infamous throughout our city. One people even began to look up to.

One I had looked up to.

And it spoke. "Very well-"

"Silvereye"

"-but you should know, I already sent the Implants away with the drones." He didn't seem to care about the forearm in my grasp, but there was a shift through him. "It's pointless, I won."

"Hah," I eviscerated the limb from the inside-out, letting it fall to the ground as a rain of scrap, "will you still be saying that from inside a jail cell?"

"I won't be going to jail." His Arachnodyne pointed at me, four blades once belonging to Bladedaughter acting as the new tips. "And I won't tell you to stand down again."

Reaching to my side, I pulled the blade he'd made for me out from its scabbard. The silver sword sang high for him to see, it's edge glimmering with the sparks I sent through it. "Then I'll make a promise…"

I was tired of being betrayed, and like he'd said… I was tired of relying on others — on him. Even if it was the painful thing to do, to him, to Starlight, to his mother… I had no idea who Ripley Donovick really was beneath all he presented himself as. Same as Sabrina. Same as the Lieutenant.

And he was dangerous, working with The Uncaged, and with powers capable of reshaping Implants… he was a threat to everything.

"…I'll take care of Starlight, and your mother." I didn't say those words easily, a part of me still wanted to believe in him.

His mask dipped, and I finally felt emotion through his gaze. Anger.

But I'd made my choice.

I would kill Dreadwire.

I would kill Ripley Donovick.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.