notApersons Definitely Not A Bear Cave For Snippets

[notAperson]

I've never seen the show. I've never read the manga. I've only read some fanfiction and that's it. and yet I cant get this idea out of my head, so I'm going to be putting it into your heads too.

Todays story brought to you by JT Music's Night on Fire. It might just give you a hint of what's to come.

-- -- -- ​

The original Level 6 Shift Project was supposed to be the achievement of their lifetimes. It was supposed to put them all on the map, and into the history books. They were going to achieve the impossible, they were going to be there for the creation of the most powerful being on the planet. They were to be the creators of the ultimate man, nay, a God. And history would have remembered them all as heroes.

Instead, it was all brought crumbling down by a couple of kids who got in over their heads, fought the number 1 most powerful Esper, and somehow managed to fucking win.

Needless to say, the dreams of many scientists were crushed that day, along with some of the actual scientists.

The project itself was cancelled. and the Sisters scattered to the winds. Some were able to accept this, others were not.

Of the multitudes who were not able to accept the projects failure and cancellation, some of them of them turned their attention to trying to sabotage what the project had turned into, others attempted to shift the remains of the project to their own ambitions. Some just couldn't get over it, and thus as the project ended, so too did they.

A couple, however, had an idea. The project itself wasn't to blame for its failure, it was outside forces acting upon it that caused it to fail.

So what if they simply tried again? in a more controlled, stable environment?

Now, they obviously couldn't do this within Academy City, for eyes were everywhere in the City. And with the Superintendent themselves ordering the projects cancellation, it would be all too easy to be discovered and shut down once more. So they moved the project to the woods around the city, in an underground bunker constructed in secret with laundered funds.

They also obviously couldn't reuse the assets from the original test, for they were already used, and used tools are always worse then freshly made ones. Not to mention that with the defeat of Accelerator, he could not be trusted to preform to adequate standards anymore.

So instead of reusing old tools, they simply made new ones. New genetic samples and DNA was collected from Misaka Mikoto in secret, and they were also able to come by some samples of Accelerators DNA through... Questionable means. But for them, the ends always justified the means. Always.

But, they didn't stop there. They wanted to do more. To truly make this project better than the last, to give themselves an Eternal Legacy.

And so, they dove deeper, into things mankind was not meant to tamper with. Through an Associate within Europe, the new project managers managed to get their hands on something that would have never been allowed inside Academy City. And something that would hopefully boost the project to new heights.

It was a book, a simple book. It was old, with a decaying leather cover and pages of vellum. On its cover, written in Latin, were two words. Spirit Tethering.

They read the book, they discussed the principles of the book, and then they applied those principles to their newly growing batch of Misaka Clones.

And five days afterwards, their efforts were seen.

The new network that had been built between the Clones was strengthened to an incredible degree. And even though the Clones were still growing, and not yet even at the stage to understand language, information passing between them was upped to an almost unbelievable quantity.

The increase would be necessary. For though they may have been able to clone him, the projected power of the cloned Accelerator would likely only be within the third level. But with the increased power of the network, each death would also give increased power to the Accelerator clone, thus making the number of twenty thousand more cloned Sisters once more feasible for the project.

And so the project continued.

-- -- -- ​

Thought.

Ideas.

Warmth.

Love.

She thought, but she couldn't. For she had no body to think with.

She felt love, though she couldn't. For she had no emotions to love with.

She was warm, but she wasn't. For she had no skin to feel warm with.

Her name was Misaka Mikoto, but it wasn't, it couldn't be, for she was not a person to be named.

And Yet. She Was. She Did. She Could.

For she was Misaka Mikoto, as well as Misaka Mikoto, and also Misaka Mikoto.

She was none of them. She was all of them.

She could feel them, moving, breathing, living, being.

She was not them, but she was.

She was the blanket upon their heads. The electrons between their thoughts. The links between their minds.

She realized what she was. She realized that she was.

She was their link, their tether, their binding.

She was their network. She was their constant connection.

She was their Big Sister.

And she loved all of them.

A conscious born from consciousnesses. A thinking being born of thought. Immaterial, yet more real than anything else in this mortal world.

She was them. They were her. And she loved them all.

She was content.

-- -- --​

A breath was taken, shakily and suddenly, as the pod was opened.

Orange goo, with the consistency of syrup, and the smell of industrial cleaner, leaked from the pod as its sole occupant sat upwards. Her eyes were wide, and she was as naked as the day she was born, for this was the day of her birth. She glanced around confusedly, she sat in a small pod in a row of other pods. that continued down a long corridor for hundreds of feet. The pods were stacked over each other, one on the bottom, on the top, on both sides of the hallway. The top level pods seemed to have a walkway spanning the corridor in front of them, with stairs leading down to ground level. Each and every pod contained the same image of a young girl, suspended in orange gel, resting inside of them, all asleep.

None of them could have been older than fourteen.

Her attention was drawn to an area directly Infront of her by the clang of footsteps on metal. She looked forward and saw a man in a lab coat with an exited face, holding a clipboard. He started speaking.

"Alright, first pod is open. first clone is decanted. First tests will begin shortly." He turned his head over his shoulder to another pair of lab coat wearing men that she just then noticed. One of which held another clip board, the other held a voice recorder of some kind. "Confirmation that everything is already set up?"

"Yep." The one holding the recorder said. "It's all good to go."

"Excellent!" he exclaimed, he turned his head back to her. "Misaka dash one, get out of your pod, and follow us." He turned around, and started heading towards a door in the wall directly behind him, his compatriots followed. Not knowing what else to do, she followed as well.

As soon as her bare feet touched the ground, a shiver worked its way up her body due to the cold of the metallic floor, she wrapped her hands around herself and started to rub them up and down her arms as she followed, still trailing orange goo from her pod.

The walk was quick, a minute at most maybe, but by the time they got to where they were going she was already shivering. The air here was cold, and the metal of the floor certainly didn't help either. She wished she had something on to keep her warm.

The room they ended up in was a small, spartan metal room. With two chairs and a table, and nothing else. She couldn't help but think that looked like an interrogation room from a crime drama, though she didn't know how she knew that, or even where that thought came from.

The man in the lab coat gestured for her to sit on one of the chairs, and she did, curling her legs up to her body to help keep herself warm.

The man took the other chair, put his clipboard down on the table, and pulled out a pencil. He looked up towards her, and with a smile, asked a question. "So, how are you currently preforming?"

She shivered. "W-what?"

"How are you currently preforming?" He asked again. "What is your bodies current status?"

"I-I'm cold. And-" She was interrupted by him writing something down on his clipboard, then looking back up towards her and asking another question. "What is the current status of the Network?"

"What?" She said again, in a slightly higher tone of voice. His smile started to lessen.

"What is the current status of the Network?" He asked once more.

She shivered again, she felt colder. "W-What Network? What are you talking about. Wha- Where am I? Who are you?" With each question she asked his smile fell more and more, and a frown started to work its way across his face. She tried to ask what was wrong, but before she could get the words out, a full body shiver went across her, and she pulled into herself more.

He turned around to look at his colleagues who had moved to stand at the wall behind him, and gestured towards her in a confused manner. "Is she supposed to be acting this way? I thought the clones weren't able to show emotions?" The man with the other clipboard had his face set into a deep frown, and he started ruffling though the pages he had.

"Their not." He said. "Something may be wrong with the clone, or maybe something's wrong with the batch. Hopefully its an isolated incident." He let the pages flip back down onto the the clipboard and pointed towards her. "Something is obviously wrong with this one thought, that's easy enough to see."

The man with the recorder responded next. "Maybe its something to do with the new type of Network we're using? Its the only really new variable."

The man at the table sighed, "God I hope not, if it is, it might be a problem that's contaminated the whole project, and that would be a horrid setback." He sat up from his chair, and turned to look back at her. "Either way, this one is obviously defective, and we need to figure out why. Security!" He called out, and a few seconds later the door opened to admit someone dressed head to toe in what looked like riot armor, with a pure black face shield. He was holding some weird kind of contraption in his hand, with with looked like a barrel and a trigger. The man nodded at the one in riot armor, then gestured towards her. "Deal with the subject" he spoke. The man in armor nodded, and walked towards her as the men in lab coats elf the room. She tried to scoot further back into her chair, but he grabbed her shoulder, and put the barrel of the object to her head.

"W-Wha-"

THUNK.

Pain.

Blackness.

-- -- --​

Thought.

Ideas.

Warmth.

Love.

...Movement.

She felt movement.

Something-one of her sisters-was moving!

She didn't know what to think about this. This new feeling. Surprise? Fear? Elation? All of them?

She didn't get much time to thing about what to feel before her sister was moving again. She settled herself in her mind, a light presence, not enough to disturb her, and watched through her eyes as she moved.

She didn't know what to think of many of the things she saw through her eyes, she knew what they all were somehow, but she didn't know what to thing of them. She could tell her thoughts about one thing though, she didn't like the cold.

Her little sister was now sitting in a room, with some men in lab coats, talking about... Something. She wasn't quite sure what the men in lab coats wanted or what she thought about them, but before she could develop an opinion they left, and another man in armor entered and-

PAIN!

W-What! What happened!? Her sister-!?

Pulling.

The feeling of hands griping a thread and pulling with all the strength they had. She felt something impact her. SHE felt something. It was warm, and she felt like she knew it. It latched onto her and hugged her, and she knew in an instant what it was. It was her her sister. Her spirit, detached from her body, coming to her.

She hugged back as best she could.

They stayed like that for a while. She didn't try to count how long. Her sister needed her, so she gave all she could.

Her sister finally relented from the hug. She could still feel her sorrow and pain and fear, but it was all lessened. Her sister looked up at her and asked a single question.

"Why?" she asked. "Why would they do that? Why did they hurt me?"

She could give no answer, not yet anyway, and so she simply hugged her sister once more, and offered all the comfort she could.

With her sister now here, some other things had come along with her, her memories. And as she hugged her sister, she simultaneously poured over those memories, trying to ascertain what had happened. And though it was never stated outright, she figured it out quick enough.

They were experiments, all of them, all of her sisters. They were to be treated as things. To be used and discarded for whatever the lab coats wanted. They weren't supposed to have emotions, they weren't supposed to think. They supposed to be good little tools, and nothing else.

It Enraged her. Her sisters weren't things. they were people. They thought, they loved, they lived. And she would not allow them to be disposed of.

The thought was already firm in her mind before she knew she had it. She would save them. All of them.

But how?

She was dragged from her sudden need to plot an escape and revenge by the tugging of her sister on her mental hand. She glanced towards her sister with a questioning look.

"Who are you?" Her sister asked. "I feel like I know you, but... But I cant remember." Her sister faltered with the last words, and a saddened look crawled its way across her face. She took her sister hands, and said with all the kindness she had, "You do know me, but it makes sense that you wouldn't remember. You were never truly awake to meet me." She pulled her in close for another hug. "I'm your Big Sister, but you can call me Big Sis." Her sister sniffled a little, and leaned into the hug, and though Big Sis had no true form, her representation seemed bigger than her sister, and thus perfect for big hugs.

"If... If your my Big Sis, then who am I?" Her sister asked. "I... I think I remember having a name? But-But it doesn't feel like mine? does that make sense?" She looked up to her, confusion in her eyes. Big Sis chuckled a little. "Yes, I do believe that that makes sense. And I also do believe that you did have a name, but that it is no longer quite you." She looked down with a smile.

"So what was my name?" Her sister asked.

"Misaka Mikoto." She said. "Your name was Misaka Mikoto. The names of all my sisters was Misaka Mikoto. But you are not her anymore, and so the name no longer fits." She Explained. Her sisters face scrunched up in confusion, then understanding, and she asked "So then what's my name now?"

"I don't know. Do you want to decide?" She questioned. Her sister thought for a moment, then shook her head. "Can you decide for me?" She asked. Big Sis smiled down at her, nodded, and began to think.

What fit her sister, her first sister. What name would be good for her. A signifier of some kind? something simple, or perhaps complex? What name could capture the gravity of the current situation?

She thought for a long while, try different words and different meanings, rolling them through her head and over her tongue. But the name she finally settled on was, for all of her thinking, deceptively simple, and yet quite complex. She smiled down at her sister. "Red." She said, "Your name shall be Red."

Red smiled up at her, tears gathered in her eyes, and she hugged her once more. "Thank you." She said, her voice no more than a whisper.

Red. For protection, strength, love, happiness, luck, healing, and many other things.

All of which they could hope to see in the future, and that they would need for the days to come.

 

[notAperson]

I do not have ADHD, my muse most certainly does.

It started with just a crossover between Worm and my original story, and then I thought "Well, this is fun, but there's not as much chaos as I want." So I did a thing and squared the Worm, and thus this was born.

Hold onto your butts, it's about to get funnie. (For me, not for them.)

Todays story brought to you by The Heavy's How You Like Me Now.

-- -- --​

Sophia's head was killing her, and she didn't know why.

She thought she might have had an explanation, but it wasn't certain, and trying to think about it currently was not a good idea. So she simply laid there, and tried to will the pain away.

"Fuuuuuuuuu-" Her teeth clicked together on the last letters, and her groan only intensified as she sat up in the bed she occupied.

What the hell happened last night?

She was certain they were celebrating something. She thinks she remembers something about completing something or another, and... A box? Something Uncle Andrew asked them to do? Fuuuuuuuuuuck... Thinking hurts too much right now.

Sophia grabbed at her head and groaned as her brain tried its best to do a recreation of John Bonham on the inside of her skull. All she can remember of last night is completing something, starting a party to celebrate, and then somebody brought out some alcohol.

Probably Sharp, the bitch.

The worst part of it all is that she's pretty sure she has school today.

She turns her head to the clock on her bedside drawer to see the time, and sees that it's-

it's...

Fucking 1pm!?

Oh Jesus Christ mom was gonna go ballistic! She cant miss another day!

Shit!

Despite the pain in her skull, Sophia hops out of her bed with all haste, and speed runs through her morning routine. Is she able to take a shower? No not enough time. Does she need to change clothes? No, thank god, she's dressed well enough, though she does take the time to put her hair into a ponytail and grab her flat cap from where it fell off. Does she smell bad? Not too much, she mostly smells of alcohol, though you shouldn't really be smelling of alcohol at school. Is mom home? Not currently. Great, she'll just drench herself in moms perfume, smelling of off brand lavender is better than alcohol. Does she have time for breakfast? Nope, grab some granola bars and straight out the door. Where the fuck is her backpack and skateboard!? No time to find them, she can borrow stuff from the others and can use her Color for a skateboard. Grab her MP3 Player and earbuds and out the door.

By the time Sophia's on the sidewalk and making best speed towards the school, only five minutes have passed. Her head is still pounding relentlessly, but she'll just get some Ibuprofen from Gabber, she knows she has a stash in her locker. She puts in her earbuds, and hits shuffle on her MP3 Player, hoping to while away the time to school listening to music. Her skateboard made from her Color clinks and clacks against the sidewalk beneath her. It looks basically like a normal skateboard, but if one were to look a bit closer, they might see it glowing a faint black, or they might possibly see the faint wisps of black smoke coming from it.

She's hoping she can get to school before lunch ends, If she gets there quick enough she can convince the others to pretend she was there the whole time and gaslight the teachers into believing her!

Its worked before, hopefully it'll work again.

-- -- --​

By the time she reaches the school, thankfully only ten minutes have passed, she should still have fifteen left, more than enough time to find the others.

She steps off her skateboard near the front, and it dissolves into wisps of black smoke behind her as she races through the front doors. She gets back to the cafeteria not a minute later, head darting around to try and fine the people she needs. Thankfully, she's able to find one of them rather easily. She moves across the cafeteria in a slow jog, and as she reaches the tall girl in the hoodie, she puts her arm around her shoulder The girl stiffens under her arm for some reason, but she ignores it.

"Hey Speedy," she starts out. "Can you please tell me what the fuck happened last night? Cus I'm remembering fuck all, except that I'm pretty sure that it's Sharps fault." She steps forward along with Speedy as the cafeteria line Speedy was standing in moves down one more. "Also, I need you and the others to convince the teachers I was here the whole time again, I am not getting another in school suspension!" She punctuates her proclamation with a poke to Speedy's shoulder, and for reason Speedy flinches away. She frowns. "You good Speedy? You get fucked up last night too?" She flicks her eyes up to the top of Speedy's head. "In fact, where the hells your Bolero?"

As she looks back down towards Speedy's face, she starts to notice some more troubling features. Speedy herself looks... Terrified. What the hell? What could have gotten laid back, everything's under control, always calm and slightly smiling Speedy afraid?

Before she's able to ask her question however, she's interrupted by another voice calling out from behind her.

"Taylor! Have you made a new-" She turns around, "-Friend...?"

The person that's now behind her, she also recognizes. "Princess!" She shouts out, arms wide open, and goes in for a hug. "Good to see ya!" She pulls back from her hug and puts her arms on Princesses shoulders. "Do you have any idea what the fuck happened last night?"

Princess herself looks okay, but then again she always looks okay. It could have been just after a drunken rager of a night in which she was almost kidnapped and had to kill six men in self defense, and she would still look perfect.

She knows because that exact situation has happened before.

Besides looking perfect, bodily at least, she also looks stupefied for some reason. And then that confusion slowly turns into fear.

"Princess?" Sophia asks. "You alright?"

"W-What- I mean- Who-?" Princess babbles out a confused litany of words and questions, before she herself is interrupted by yet another surprise intrusion.

"Hey Emma, how's the-" The question is interrupted by the sudden cut off of the voice, and as Sophia turns to meet this latest new introduction to the conversation, she cant help but feel that she recognizes this voice as well.

But not in the way many, herself included, would usually think about.

Because the voice sounds like her.

Sophia turns around, and faces herself.

She doesn't look exactly like her, but she does look close. Same body type, relatively same kind of clothes, the exact same pair of shoes. She does have her hair down however, and she doesn't have her hat, nor her jacket, but the similarities are more common than the differences.

She too, looks utterly stupefied.

"What the fuck?" Are the first words out of both Sophia and her clones mouths. They also both point to each other at seemingly the same time. "What the fuck!?" They both repeat.

This is where the pattern breaks. "Okay!" Sophia exclaims, "I'm hungover and probably still a bit drunk. But I'm not drunk enough to be seeing fucking double!"

The other Sophia is simply gaping. Mouth moving up and down, but no sound coming out.

The silence stretches for an uncomfortable amount of time, enough for other people to notice.

"CAPE!" Someone screams.

And that's when it all goes to shit.

 

[notAperson]

Once again, I've never seen the anime, and never played the games, but I have read a good amount of fiction and now I have to write about it.

This chapter, and in fact this whole idea, is brought to you by everything the musical artist Sail North has done. But most prominently Against The Tide and Unsinkable.

-- -- --​

Saying the Eltswhere is an unusual place is an obvious understatement. The Eltswhere is, quite literally, a realm of dreams, imagination, and thought come to life. And what one can find within it varies greatly.

Some places resemble the depths of space, only navigable by starship. Others seem like vast planes of grass, with rolling hills and the occasional stream, stretching on into forever. Some places take the form of dank and dark caves, devoid of oxygen, and needing special tools to traverse.

Forests, mountains, caves, lakes of lava, the depths of space, the atmosphere of a gas giant. The Eltswhere takes the form of anywhere and everywhere. All places that mortal minds could conceive, and many they could not.

The current location our story takes place, is a vast ocean, edge always over the horizon, and land never larger than a large island chain.

The specific place we currently see, is an island know to the bureaucrats as DV-851B-RSS 3, and to the sailors who work its shores as Martlans Wharf.

The Wharf is a rather normal looking place for an island, around two miles lone ang a mile in width, the Wharf is how to many small creatures, some of which would be considered normal to find on an isolated island in the ocean, others not so much. The main thing that makes it different from any other random island however, is the multitude of docks, bays, warehouses and cranes along its shores. All there for housing the multitude of ships and other vessels stored on the island.

For that is what this island is, a storage area. Specifically, its a storage area for the reserve ships of the Council Of Planets Navy, mostly older and outdated types of ships. In fact the RSS in the designation stands for Reserve Ship Storage. An interesting fact? The bureaucrats will certainly say it is.

Anyway, while all of that information might be useful, none of it is the reason we are currently focusing on this island. No, the reason we are here is fact a much more recent occurrence.

"STORM!" Shouts one of the island lookouts, looking at the multicolored clouds on the horizon. Flashes of purple, black, and orange lightning thundering at a constant pace beneath them. "Chaos Storm!" The lookout shouts once more, speaking to the man down the stairs in the emergency radio room for the whole island. "Sound the alarm! begin evacuations!"

The storm itself stretched from one end of the horizon to another, a roiling, crackling wave of clouds, lightning, and color. It was massive, destructive, and heading straight for them. A shrill tone sounded out across the island, and all the men women occupying it dropped what they were doing, jumped to their feet, and ran. All running for the emergency teleporters that would get them off the island.

Now, before we continue, an interesting and relevant fact about Council ships. All ship of the Council Of Planets, no matter their size, include a dumb AI to help run the ship. Doing either menial tasks, or task the crew themselves could not preform. And because the Eltswhere is, at its core, a realm of dreams and chance. Sometimes, through random happenstance or for reasons that no one yet understands, these AI can gain sentience. It's rare, but it does happen.

Whenever such an event occurs, two things immediately happen. First off, the once AI now Ship Spirit is given a citizenship. Secondly, they are asked if they want to continue their service, if the answer is yes-which it usually is-then things simply continue as normal. If it is no, then they are honorably discharged, and able to assume a civilian identity.

This knowledge is important because Martlans Wharf contained five such instances of Ship Spirits. The CNS Bayonet, CNS Hoplite, CNS Sparrow, CNS Slip Of Time, and CNS Kings Chalice.

And though the Spirits are able to be separated from their ship forms, to do stuff such as move on their own and assume civilian identities, this process takes about a day as well as the help of a Color Mage.

"Marcus! Marcus what the hell is going on!?" Chalice shouted as she raced after her Chief Engineer. A siren had started blaring out across the Wharf not a minute ago, and everyone seemed to freaking out.

"Chaos Storm!" Marcus shouted back through huffing breaths. "We're evacuating the Wharf!"

"What!?" Chalice shouted, "Now!?"

"Yes fucking now!"

"None of the drives are even bloody warm! it'll take at least five minutes-!"

"We don't have five minutes!" Marcus slowed and turned to look at her, "We're leaving you behind."

Chalices eyes grew wide, "What?" Marcus stopped, and pulled her into a hug.

"We don't have time, any of it." He clutched her tighter. "I'm so fucking sorry."

And then he was off, down the hallway, down the ramp, and off to the teleporters.

Chalice just stood their for a second, the warm feeling of the hug slowly leaving her ethereal skin. She disappeared, and then reappeared on the bow of her self. Looking into the storm. In the two minutes she had taken eyes off it, it had already gotten miles closer. She sighed, and watched the storm for a moment, before she started receiving an incoming transmission from Slip.

She accepted it.

"Chalice! What's happening!? My crew just bailed and that's not something they should be doing while this storm in gaining on us-"

"Their leaving." Chalice interrupted, "Evacuating the Wharf, this storm cant be ridden out."

"Well then why the fuck aren't we spooling up the drives and-"

"They don't have time." She interrupted again, "They barely have time to get out with the telies, we would take too long, we're being left behind."

There was silence over the line.

"...Fuck."

"Yeah..."

"...Do we tell the littles?"

"Nah, let them rest. Who knows, maybe we metal gals might be able to ride this out unlike the fleshies." Chalice finished off with a fake upbeat attitude. They both knew that if everyone was evacuating and not using the ships, then this storm would destroy everything, them included.

"Heh. Yeah, maybe." Slip replied, despondency lurking under every word. Then the connection cut.

Chalice simply sat down on the bow of her ship, cradled her legs to her chest, and watched the storm approach.

It arrived within minutes, colorful lightning striking the island and blasting craters in the dirt. Then the lightning reached her, she felt pain, and then nothing.

-- -- -- ​

The People in this scene were right about somethings, and wrong about others.

They were right that the storm would reach the island before they could evacuate the ships, they were right that it would cause damage, and they were right that some of them would have likely been killed by the storm.

They were wrong in guessing what exactly the storm was, for it was not just another storm of destructive Colors and power traversing across the waves of this part of the Eltswhere. It was storm born as the result of a change in the Eltswhere itself.

A new world had just been connected. A splash was made in the not-fabric of the Eltswhere, and its waves rushed out across it like ripples on a pond.

Martlans Wharf weathered the outermost ripples well enough, but when the inner ripples reached it, it was torn from its moorings in the Eltswhere, and dropped through a hole, the new connection, into somewhere else.

Martlans Wharf dropped out of the Eltswhere, and into reality.

-- -- --​

Chalice woke up. This concerned her.

First off because she was supposed to be dead, that storm quite literally had her dead to rights, and she didn't have anyway to escape.

Secondly, because she didn't wake up in the familiar metal of her hull, but instead on what seemed to be a beach, face down in the sand.

She sat up and spat the sand she had gotten in her mouth out, and then rose to her feet to look around.

It was the Wharf. She was still on the Wharf. Yes there were some craters from the lightning, some of the buildings had been damaged, and the power was obviously out, but it was still the Wharf.

What the hell?

The most confusing thing about all of this however, was the fact she was standing on the beach and not on her hull. In fact, she was right beside where she'd been moored and she couldn't see her hull anywhere.

In fact, she couldn't see the hulls of any of the ships that should have been in sight.

Oh, this couldn't possibly be good.

 

[notAperson]

Before I put out any new chapters for Old Guns, Old Blades, I wanted to touch on how I'm going to be naming the ships, currently at least. Just because I thought it was cool and wanted to hear what other people might think about it.

So far I've got naming schemes for Corvettes, Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships, and Carriers.

The first three are rather simple. Corvettes will be named after types of weapons. Blades, guns, anti-matter planet cracking warheads, all fair game.

Frigates will be named after types of soldiers and war fighters, like hoplites, or archers, or stuff like that.

And Destroyers will simply be named after animals.

Skipping to the end, Carriers will be named after famous military leaders, gotta get something for doing stuff for your country, and having a ship named after you seems pretty good.

My favorite two however are Cruisers and Battleships. Taking a page from Halo's book, Cruisers will named after poems, or in a poetic fashion. Some of my favorite I have written down are
Sunrise Over Eden,
Within Battered Walls,
Through Waters Deep,
and In Armoured Sunlight.

Battleships will be somewhat similar, but also different. They will be named threateningly, like they are when they arrive, a vague threat towards whoever they are pointed at. Now this may be a weird way to name a ship, but what would you rather have on your side, and have your enemy fight, a ship named after a long dead politician, or a ship named The Horseman?

I've got a lot of these ones, unfortunately I doubt many battleships will show up in this story, so I'm gonna get my favorites out here.

Zealous Inquisitor,
Whisper of the Abyss,
Zero-sum,
Mortality,
Event Horizon,
Entropy,
Expedited Technology Exchange,
Rapid Unplanned Disassembly,
Bottleneck Event,
Malice Of Kings,
Conclusion Absolute,
Imposition Of Will,
Eminent Domain,
Fury Of The Atom,
Murphy's Law,
Proportionate Response,
Sunk Cost Fallacy,
Giggling Madness,
Direct Competitor,
Cognitive Dissonance,
Attrition Rate,
And my favorite, Eclipse Under Heaven.

I got more, many more, tell me if you want to hear any of them.

 

[notAperson]

This chapter was helped along by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's song Beat the Devil's Tattoo.

-- -- --​

The next few days were... Challenging, to say the least. The scientists pulled more of her sisters from their pods. To do tests and questionnaires and the like.

Some good news that Big Sis had discovered was that due to her connection to her sisters, she was able to actively suppress-or at least lower-their emotional responses. Something that helped keep the idea that the scientists plan was proceeding as intended, and that the first clone let out had just been an unlucky accident.

The accompanying bad news was that she had to do such a thing at all.

She spent the week or so that her sisters were out planning, observing, and comforting. Planning their escape, observing her sisters surroundings and learning the facilities layout, and comforting her sisters while they slept. The emotion suppression thing she had found earlier? It wasn't exactly perfect, the emotions didn't actually go away, they just weren't being shown. It was similar to a war veteran bottling up all their emotion, and if she didn't try to do something about it, eventually that bottle would explode under the pressure.

So she spent their sleeping hours helping. Taking all her sisters who had awoken from their dreamless slumber in tubes into a shared lucid dream, and letting them simply be. Letting them talk, letting them play, letting them live and be happy.

She let them be the teenagers they were supposed to be.

And as an added benefit. From her experimenting with lucid dreams with her waking sisters, she found out how to included her still sleeping sisters. She soon turned their dreamless sleep, in something much less dreamless.

And as Big Sis let her sisters play their games in their dreams, she played hers in the waking world. A game of amateur spy and spook, where the end goal was freedom, and failure meant death.

It most definitely wasn't as fun as the games her sisters played.

But, in the end, in a ridiculous twist that actually made Big Sis laugh, her problems were practically solved for her.

-- -- --​

The opportunity was almost hilariously perfect.

No, it actually was hilariously perfect. Big Sis couldn't stop laughing for half an hour.

The situation was thus. The scientists knew that what they were doing was obviously illegal, and if Academy City, or anyone in general really, ever found out about it, they would come down as hard as a cement truck full of bricks straight off the golden gate bridge.

So of course, they were gonna need security.

But instead of doing the normal, smart thing, and hiring actual security personnel. The scientists collectively went, "Hey, you know all these clones we got? And how they all come basically pre packed with military programming? Why don't we just give them all guns and have them do security for us! I'm absolutely certain there is no way this could backfire whatsoever!"

So on the morning of the tenth day of the sisters awakening, Big Sis rode along with three of her sister as they escorted into a part of the facility they had never previously been in. It was an armory, and an armory that had been stocked with enough supplies to outfit all their security personnel, and ensure the safety of the whole facility from any attacks from any entities.

Or, in less fancy words. It had enough gear in it to outfit an entire private military that was the size of a small countries armed forces. They were given access to guns, body armor, cars, trucks, helicopters. Fucking tanks and planes.

It actually worried Big Sis for a while, because it seemed too perfect an opportunity.

But no, it was real. The scientists planned to give the sister access to a small countries worth of equipment. All to "defend the facility from any possible hostile forces."

It was to be their death knell.

Honestly though, Big Sis could admit that it might have even been a smart idea. The clones were supposed to be utterly obedient and docile. Of course, because they actually weren't, the scientists instead handed their own executioner their gun.

For whatever reason they did it though. Whether it was because they wanted as little people to know about this place as possible, they wanted to cut some funding, they just trusted the clones to do what they were told, or a mixture of all three, it backfired spectacularly.

And twelve days after their first awakening, the sisters took hold the reins of their own fate.

-- -- --​

She had a different name when she first awoke. She, like all of her sister, was named after their progenitor, the one they came from, the original. All twenty thousand of them, named Misaka Mikoto, all the same name, face, and person.

All the same.

Now though, after awakening but not really into a lucid dream made by her Big Sis, she was different. She had her own name, she was an individual, a person.

She had liked seeing the birds flit through the trees in that imaginary realm, so she named herself after them.

Her name was Jackdaw, and she was her own person, and nobody else.

She also was currently in a firefight, and should probably not be getting distracted.

She shook herself from her fuck as her sister waved her forward, covering down the hallway with a burst of automatic rifle fire. She rushed froward, gun up and ready, and continued down the hallway at a steady pace. One of her sisters stacked up behind her, following her lead. The next time the security officer stuck his head around the corner, it was decorated with two new piercings straight through the skull, to accompany the ones on his ears.

Her sister moved to the other side as they came to the T-junction, and they swept both ends simultaneously. It was clear for now.

"Clear!" They called.

Four other sister moved up, setting up positions on the T-junction to cover both ends. She hear a sister behind her start speaking, the one they had decided was the "commander" of this group of theirs.

"Inks! Your keeping your girls here and making this hallway a roadblock, nothing gets through. Blanc, take Metis and help get Rose back to the surgical ward we purloined. Flack, you and your girls are with me, we're taking the right passage, Jackdaw, you and your Raptors are taking the left."

"Yes Ma'am!" Was the call from every mouth as the sister moved to do as instructed. Blanc and Metis moved to grab the girl at the back leaning up against a wall, a bandage applied to the shoulder slowing turning red indicating why.

The armor they had gotten from the armory was good. It was sized to fit them, and fit them well as they were all the same size. But it wasn't all covering, and it wasn't perfect.

As Blanc and Metis move back, a group of girls pushed past them up to Jackdaw, her... Raptors.

It wasn't exactly her choice that they were named what they were named, or that they were hers in the first place, but she could deal with it. The six other girls had met up with Jackdaw in their dreams, them having all already chosen their names together. Discovering that Jackdaw was also named after a bird, they had declared her to be part of their group with no input from Jackdaw herself. And then Hawk had declared that as she was not named after a raptor, that she would standout more, and everyone knew that the person who usually stood out most in a group was the leader, so she was obviously their leader. The others had gone along with it, and Jackdaw suddenly found herself a leading a group of numbskull risktakers.

Idiots. All of them.

She still loved them for it.

"Form up!" She called. "Eagle, Buzzard, you're in front, ill be behind you. Falcon, Osprey, you're next. Vulture, Hawk, you're rear guard. Lets move."

They formed up and started down the hallway, keeping close and checking any doors for threats. They were one of the squads moving towards what was the scientists main living quarters, the object was to capture not kill, but she also doubted anyone would make a huge fuss if a couple scientists accidentally caught some "lead poisoning".

It was chaos. All of it. The sisters who were awake had split up, some headed to the armory to initially secure it, some headed to the cloning labs to release the rest of their sisters. There was no true plan, it was almost all spur of the moment, but everyone knew the end goal, freedom. Sometimes things that could be considered official orders came down through the Network, the big thing linking them all together, but most of the time the sisters simply decided what to do in the moment, and trusted their sister to have their back.

And in the end, Jackdaw trusted her sisters, and they trusted her. They would get through this, they just will have to make use of some "Advanced Diplomatic Techniques" as Big Sis had said.

And firepower. Lots and lots of firepower. Jackdaw still wasn't sure where Buzzard had gotten her belt-fed, as it was almost half her size, but she was sure it would come in handy in the future.

A future that was looking closer and closer every minute.