Seriously, though, MGLN has the Silencio Problem; the shipping has grown to the point where it chokes out everything else.
I've noticed this a lot. I don't get it. I mean, what is there really to ship to the detriment of storytelling? It's not like it's Harry Potter or something. NanoFate is pretty blatant, but it also works just as well if you write them as
Platonic Life Partners. I kind of like them better that way in a lot of respects, mostly because it doesn't get a lot of love. But everything else is really vague. Chrono/Amy is cute, Yuuno/Nanoha was pretty obviously not hapening after StrikerS, and Hayate and the Wolkenritters don't have much going on in that respect. I don't really care enough about the other characters to give a damn.
But moving on.... Update. Enjoy.
This one kind of fought me a lot in editing, and I'm still not super happy with it, but I need to move ahead.
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Part Two
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New Era Calendar Year 0064
I was sick and tired of tests. It seemed as though that is all I had been going through since my transfer into Raising Heart.
My creator, for all his apparent foolishness, was most thorough. He had been testing every single system one by one, constantly poking and prodding at me. Almost as though he was trying to get a rise out of me, to get me to lash out and prove that I was just as unstable as the six previous attempts.
I was smarter than that. Maybe.More likely it was a product of my nature. I have never been prone to lashing out at things, and I have always taken my circumstances in stride, whether they were caused by me or an outside influence. Or a who-knows-what in this case.
Doctor Dartinia was also crazy. What sort of person tries to create artificial intelligences by directly uploading human minds without consent? It was like he was trying to get himself killed by AI.
On the other hand, crazy or not, he had successfully created a sapient Intelligent Device, which was apparently his life's work or something. To create what was effectively a counterpart to Belkan Unison Devices. Why he wanted to do it escapes me.
It was only after the long sequence of tests that he actually finished my functionality, adding in the final feature of Raising Heart. It was a micro-sized mana converter. It allowed me to automatically collect ambient, unlinked mana and convert it to a basic format of linked mana to keep me functioning. It wasn't necessarily fast, but running at full capacity would give me, acting on my own the equivalent magical power of a low C-rank mage, going by Time-Space Administration Bureau rankings.
Smart man, waiting to put that in. Although having it in before the AI transfer was probably how all the others got the mana to try and blow him up. So maybe he wasn't so smart.
I had a goddamn lexicon of mana manipulation and formatting dumped into my brain at the same time. Most of the data was on Mid-Childan style, but also contained basic data on Belkan, Neo-Belkan, and over two dozen lesser styles. In addition to methods to convert the aformentioned styles into Mid. Useful stuff.
It was all in mathematical equations of course, and even the most basic work dealt with at least 4 dimensions.
Those flashy runes and magic circles? Not just for show. They're a representation of an extradimensional foundation upon which the rest of a spell is shaped. It's impressive stuff - even the basic forms.
It was shortly after this data dump, during a period of low power, specifically my defragmentation cycle, that the entire lab shuddered.
I had no idea what was outside the lab since the whole lab was shielded. But the lab shuddering like an earthquake did not seem good at all.
I broke off the defrag cycle a moment after the tremors began, and activated my full detection suite. The Doctor and a pair of assistants, whose names I still have not found out came running into the lab almost immediately.
My awareness expanded massively as soon as the door opened. They hadn't waited for the first door to close before opening the second.
My scan mapped the entirety of my surroundings. It also informed me of the problem. The lab was on a dimensional ship. And at this very moment it was in the process of crashing into a planet.
My case opened and I was grabbed by the Doctor as he rushed about. I allowed my basic code to take over most functions while I focused on accessing the ship's main computer.
"Raising Heart, access lab file storage. The access code is A437-BY99, use my voice for recognition." The doctor dropped me onto the main computer console.
I grinned, or I woudl have if I had a face. He just handed me a way into his files on a silver platter.
[Yes, my Master]
[Accessing]
[Beginning file download]
[7 minutes to completion]
As it turned out, adddressing my creator as 'Master' was not something I could change. It was hard-coded into my systems to address users with Master-level access in that fashion. It wasn't a big deal, but I would rather not address
him in that fashion.
A lot of my voice responses were coded that way, and I didn't see a lot of point changing them. Truth be told, I didn't particularly want to talk to any of these people.
[Download complete]
But I didn't have to give audio ques for everything I did, only for things that directly addressed a User or something a User asked me to do.
So I didn't give any indication that I was also downloading the ship's own data banks, with special attention to charts of the dimensional sea and the crew manifest.
My creator grabbed me up and started running through the halls of the ship. Probably heading to the transport room. My creator was not a very powerful mage. Were he not the one who made me, he wouldn't even qualify for access to my most basic functions.
My access to the ship's systems was limited to pretty mundane stuff, but that didn't mean I couldn't be a pain. The ship was going to crash into the planet, and this was a perfect opportunity to get rid this madman.
The crew manifest had told me everything I needed to know about both him and the rest of the crew. They were all wanted dimensional criminals, my creator most of all for his "unethical experiments on sapient minds". Who would have guessed?
So I stalled. I slowed down the opening of doors, locked them at random, made the elevators travel in the wrong direction. The systems that controlled them had no encryption at all. It was child's play.
It would have been impossible for me when I was human, but I was made of math, and its manipulation was as easy as breathing. Until my master decided to be smart about things.
The ship began to shake constantly. Already parts of the ship were starting to burn up in the surprisingly thick atmosphere of the planet.
"Raising Heart, access ship's systems and ensure a clear route to the transport room. Find me the fastest way there."
[Accessing]
[Route plotted]
[continue straight ahead]
As my voice subroutine relayed instructions I was devising a new strategy. My access to the ship's guidance was restricted, same with all the other navigational functions, which was a shame.
At this rate, the ship wouldn't crash before Dartinia made it out.
The ship shuddered and one of the ceilings on the route collapsed.
[Recalculating Route]
I jumped on this chance with both my metaphorical hands and slowed my processing speed drastically.
"Raising Heart?"
[Calculating]
"Hurry up Raising Heart!"
[Route calculated]
[Backtrack 13 meters and take the left corridor]
It was over. The new route was too slow. No way for the Doctor to get out of this now. Which only left one problem.
Keeping me intact when the ship crashed. Maybe I should have thought about that first.
