So Many Disadvantages, So Little Time

Eldritch-Orphan · Sep 12, 2016

So Many Disadvantages, So Little Time: In which ROB is a dick to make Ron Jeremy envious, and the SI cannot into Progenitor.

Story Arcs: As all story posts will be listed in the thread index, this list will instead focus on the arcs of the story.

CHAPPiE/JoJo/??? Arc: 1.1: Arrival - ???

Though they were hard to find, there were certain places in Johannesburg that, if occupied frequently, at least weren't constantly observed by either the gangers or the police.

One such area was the basement of an apartment building so run-down and full of past conflicts that calling it a multi-leveled battlefield wouldn't be entirely wrong.

In this basement, unseen by squatters or the deactivated security system, a minor warp in reality commenced, leaving behind a heap of metal. This heap proceeded to twist upon itself, transforming into a chassis familiar to- and despised by- a large part of the Johannesburg population, though with some major modifications.

After all, the being responsible for the chassis would never think of abandoning its motif just to blend in. Blending in in this manner was practically breaking the rules, as it was.

After a minute, the chassis was complete, and the being riffled through the myriad realities at its disposal, looking for a suitable mind to copy.

It only took it a few seconds to find one, and another millisecond to process and transfer the data.

The process complete, the being forced the chassis to boot up, before turning its selectively omnipotent gaze away from the sub-universe.

Even if it planned on keeping track of the new addition to its Commanders, it still had work to do, work that was of a much higher priority.

The first red flag that something was horribly, horribly wrong was the fact that I apparently had an internal GPS system. The second red flag was that said GPS system was telling me that it was high noon in Johannesburg, rather than 9:00 PM in Kentucky.

Whatever I had for eyes winked on and off in a double-blink, before I raised my hand to said eye-things. That was the third red flag- my hand was entirely metal, its fingers segmented and gunmetal grey.

One, two, three strikes, you're out.

I very calmly forced every motor in my body to make like a seven-hour-old corpse and deactivated my vocal synthesizer, before freaking the fuck out.

I admit with no small amount of shame that this process took almost half an hour. By the end of it, though I was nowhere near level-headed, I was at least calm enough to go over what I knew, and my list of priorities, which my internal systems were considerate enough to punch into what seemed like a mental text file for later review. That was nice, I guess.

Facts:
1. After a quick glance, it looks like my mind's been shoved into a copy of... whatever the hell CHAPPiE's chassis was called, probably modified for Progen BS given the likely cause of this crap, and has been left at "confused American high-schooler" level rather than "sadistic Von Neumann death-bot of badassery" level.
2. I am currently in Johannesburg. This, combined with Fact 1, means that I'll probably have to deal with the MOOSE guy soon, which will be fun /s.
3. Whichever ROB got to me, in ROBbish tradition (probably), they didn't bother giving me the token Conagher-Lite protocols. Thus, I know fuck-all about designing bots and AI, and have even less of an economy to do it with.

Priorities:
Short-Term:
1. Get the hell out of Johannesburg (Incomplete).
2. Deal with MOOSE-bag, if I can (Incomplete). Ain't no way I'm letting that particular bastard get a grip on the place.
3. See about nabbing a CAD A.I. from Tetravaal if they've got one, so's I can get my death-bot game on (Incomplete). If they don't, get Deon to make it for me (Secondary objective incomplete).
Long-Term:
1. See if a version of me exists in another universe, if inter-universal travel is even possible in my case, and flip off the lucky SOB like nobody's business (Incomplete).
2. Do the same to the ROB that put me in this position, if possible without getting an Existence Not Found error (Incomplete). If not, flip off mentally (Secondary objective complete. Oh yeah, is it ever).

Right. With that out of the way, I reactivated my motors, left the dingy room I'd appeared in, and stopped dead as some squatter shattered a wooden baseball bat on my optic plating.

By the time I regained control of my motors from the confusion, the asshole had already tipped me over and started whaling on me with... another baseball bat, this one aluminum. Seriously, where did they get those things from? Are they just standard generic below-poverty thug gear? Whatever. While I didn't catch the thing mid-swing, per-se, I did stop its attacks, by way of accidentally smacking my wrist into it hard enough to send it tumbling from the ganger's hands, as well as giving the shaft a hell of an angle. Bender would be proud. Actually, let me pull up that text file real quick.

Priorities:
Long-Term:
3: See about upgrading my chassis with an ethanol processor (Incomplete).
4: If inter-universal travel is possible, find the Futurama-verse upon reaching drinking age, then commence drinking contest with Bender (Incomplete).

Now, what was I focusing on, again? Oh, yeah, that thug... who apparently decided to take his leave while I was updating my priorities. I honestly didn't know how to feel about that. Well, that wasn't important right now. What was important was getting out of this hellhole. This time, I actually managed to get out of the room. Progress.

Seeing that there was no one else in the building, which in Johannesburg fashion was wrecked to all hell, I decided to see about the various functions of my new body.

First on the list was the thickened section of my forearm, going from the wrist to about an inch below the elbow, with what looked like a projector screen. It reminded me of a Pip-Boy, mostly, and probably served a similar purpose. Sure enough, tapping the screen made a holographic frame around the height of a human head and twice as wide pop up over it, with three icons running right from the top-left corner, which I assumed were app shortcuts. Going by the names, the apps represented my internal settings, weapons systems, and a CAD program, the last of which I would abstain from using for now, given that I'd only just gotten into Intro to Engineering by the time I'd been put in this thing.

What was of most interest to me, predictably given the locale, was the weapons systems app, which showed a few options when I clicked on it- an as-of-yet empty list of martial tactics which I apparently had to accrue, a similarly barebones list of gun management protocols, a toggler for an in-built technique analyzer which would fill the aforementioned lists, and finally an options list for a P.E.P. weapon mounted on my left wrist.

Given that I was pretty much a mini-Commander now, I imagine a bit of explanation is in order. P.E.P. stands for Pulsed Energy Projectile, which is basically a laser device that makes a little plasma explosion wherever the laser's aimed at. While it was at a nonlethal level at the moment, I could easily up its output to lethal levels, though it would probably overheat quicker, which I didn't much care to happen in a firefight if I was depending on it, which, at the moment, I was.

With the weapons systems out of the way, I moved on to the internal settings, which were... pretty mundane, honestly. Volume settings for my audio receivers and vocal synthesizer, wavelength settings for my optics, power intensity levels, togglers for secondary apps, the things you would expect from it. The one that caught my optic was the option to enable the Resource Core, but given that I had nothing to build an economy off of and didn't have a fabber arm (yet), I passed it up. Better not to activate the pint-sized nuke in an urban zone until I could use it properly.

Secondly were my actual limbs. As demonstrated by my little remodeling of that bat, my electronic arms were hella strong, and I imagined that my legs were the same case, although I wasn't going to risk bringing down a bit of the upper floor to check if it affected my vertical movement. Instead, I punched and kicked at the walls in a hamfisted imitation of kung fu, and after a few seconds I decided that it was too effective for me to use on organic enemies.

Well, except for maybe MOOSE-bag, but I digress.

Finally, there were my mental faculties, which I brought up by toggling the A.I. Manager app on my Pip-Boy arm. Apparently, my current core had 8 A.I. slots, one of which was occupied, obviously, by me. While I was loathe to let another person in my head for the moment, at least I knew that I wouldn't have to store the CAD A.I. I was planning on yoinking/commissioning in a flash drive, or something stupid like that. It also gave me the option to copy myself into one of the slots, but again, only one person at a time. Besides, I imagine that watching my little freak-out from a semi-outside perspective would be horribly embarrassing, and then I'd have to go through the hassle of finding a body for mirror-me, since I wouldn't be able to bring myself to delete the guy after creating him, and now I was beginning to see why all those other Commander SIs took the no-empathy road. Yeesh.

With that high note out of the way, I went back to the weapons app, toggled the P.E.P. on, and left the building...

...only to happen upon a couple of brown-skinned gangers going to town on a white woman, with no response save mine in sight.

Oh. Right. South Africa.

My robotic imitation of a sigh was the only warning the racist gangers got before I sent a plasma pulse at their torsos, the combined pain from the ionized shot scorching their flesh and the following EMP frying their nerves putting them down within seconds. As I approached the bruised and terrified woman, I made my posture as non-threatening as possible (with mixed success, going by her expression), reaching down with the hand not equipped with a portable agony launcher. For the first time since I got this body, I spoke, the buzzing noise from the synthesizer mixing with my vaguely Southern accent. "Hey, miss... you alright?"

It took a bit of calming down on her part, but eventually she nodded, taking my hand and pulling herself up. Her speech was accented, but otherwise perfectly legible. "...yes. Will, um, will you call the officers in?"

Again, I sighed, belatedly realizing that I wasn't actually connected with the police network- a bit of a blessing, I guess, given how fast MOOSE-bag would be on my ass if he found out I was an A.I. "I'm... not quite connected at the moment, it's complicated, ma'am. Look, you know how to get back home from here, right?"

A nod. "Yes, sir. Should I, erm, call them on my phone?"

I shook my head. "No, ma'am. Just give me the call number, and I'll patch them in. You be safe now."

After giving me the number- 10177- she left, too confused to question my intelligence and stumbling a bit due to her wounds from the gangers. Hopefully, she'd dismiss my robotic body as a hallucination from the battering, or something. Once she was out of sight, I fiddled around with the internal options to set up a tele-comms app, then set up the emergency contact and called.

The response was quick, surprisingly. "10177, what's your emergency?"

Though the responder couldn't hear it, I shifted my head as if cracking my neck. "Yes, sir. I've come across a couple of squatters who were beating up a bystander, took 'em out. Just calling in so you can swing by, patch them up, arrest them, the works, y'know? Hold on, sir, let me get the location."

By the time the ambulance swung by, I was already gone. I thought about staying to make sure they stayed down, but I figured it'd be safer to refuge in audacity until I could get my little war machine turning.

Now, then- time to bust open Tetravaal. Maybe.

This was gonna suck, wasn't it?

A/N: First thread, so be gentle within reason. That said, feedback is appreciated.

Eldritch-Orphan · Sep 14, 2016

SMDSLT

Yeah, that whole "yoinking a CAD A.I. from Tetravaal" thing? Not happening quite yet.

Why? Well, that was pretty simple. My progress towards that particular location had encountered several, very persistent obstacles.

Namely, that the place seemed to have replaced every rat with a fucking ganger. Even if I was supposed to be focusing on Tetravaal and MOOSE-bag, I still felt like I had to clean up the place.

Case in point, the former hotel I was entering. The battered maybe-corpses in the lobby did not give me confidence, nor did the sound of a fistfight overhead. Navigating the hotel wasn't especially hard- I could punch or blow up most of the debris in my way, and my progress using the stairs was unimpeded by the flimsy stamina I had back when I was a meatbag- so it only took me a minute to reach the fight. By then, however, the scuffle had ended, a robot standing victorious over the bruised and lumpy form of a ganger.

Even as I paused, realizing that the robot's chassis wasn't a Tetravaal model, it looked up, directing its monocular glower at my optic plate.

Ah, shit. Welp, time to see if I could feel pain.

Luckily, as the robot fell into a pseudo-boxing stance, one of the gangers lying on the floor lifted his head and shot right at me what the fuck-

My would-be opponent whipped around in surprise as the ganger's bullet flattened itself on my chest plating, not wincing at my leap into the air and embarrassingly girly yelp of fear. Once I had calmed down, I found that I was lying on the floor, the robot standing over me such that I could see the blood splattered on its feet. At that particular sight, even though I knew the robot's kick wouldn't do much more than dent my plating, I still made my hands leap into the air in surrender.

Recognizing my gesture immediately, the robot scoffed, its synth voice- male, I noted, and baritone- speaking in English, albeit with a heavy Asian accent. "Good grief. I thought I'd seen enough bullshit in the last week." As I tried to figure out what the robot meant, it- he, I guess- leaned down and offered his hand. He moved his head like he was cracking his neck as I pulled myself up, and crossed his arms as I turned to face him, his bulb-eye looming a head above my antennae. "Right. I can tell you're not one of those police goons, so tell me who you are now."

To my credit, I only hesitated a little bit in answering him. "Erm... call me Mark. I didn't know you were in here, believe me- hell, I didn't know there was anyone like me here. How long have you been, um, like this?"

My fellow upload shrugged. "Since about a week ago, as I said. No idea why whatever bastard did this put me in Johannesburg, of all places, but I've been beating up these lowlifes since then- as well as the officers, when they're stupid enough to fight me. You?"

"Oh, I only got here last night. I'm actually trying to get some tech together to take down one of the police's suppliers, but I've gotten sidetracked doing what you were doing."

The top part of the robot's head raised its angle a bit, an imitation of an eyebrow raise. "Oh? Who are these suppliers, specifically, and what did they do to you if you're trying to sabotage them?"

"We~ell, their boss, I don't quite remember his name, is kind of a dick to us thinking bots. As far as I recall, he believes that artificial intelligences are against God's order or something, and I wouldn't put it past him to gun for us the moment he knows we exist. As such, I'm trying to lay low and put down his operations before they start."

The robot took a second to consider my reasoning. "Hm. If he's as much of an asshole as you say he is, I can't blame you for wanting to bust him up a little." A shrug. Good, he wasn't suspicious of me now. "Alright, you're good for now. Might even help you out, if I get the chance." With that, he left. Unfortunately for him, I wanted to know who he was.

"Wait! You didn't tell me your name." He turned his head back to me, his 'eyebrow' raised. "Uh, I mean, I told you mine, right? Only fair you give me yours. Besides, I want to know it so I can find you if I need you for something."

His eyebrow lowered. A few seconds staring at me, then he turned away. "...Jotaro. Jotaro Kujo. You stay safe, kohai."

He left, not noticing how I had frozen in shock.

Facts:
4: The ROB that got to me didn't leave me alone- he's put another Commander in my universe.
5: That Commander is Jotaro fucking Kujo.
6: I can finally, unironically, say that senpai noticed me. Suck it.

The next time I encountered Jotaro, three days later, I had the advantage of premeditation. I'd gotten some papers, enabled a writing translator app, and put up signs on dozens of buildings, calling for Jotaro to meet me on a specific rooftop in the evening- in katakana, so that some dumbass gangers wouldn't get it in their heads to come after me.

Sure enough, at 7:00 PM, Jotaro came up from the building's stairwell, finding me sitting across from him on an AC unit. As he walked over to me, I pushed off of it, standing before him. "Right. As I'm sure you've figured out by now, Kujo-senpai, you're not exactly in the same universe anymore."

At that, Jotaro scoffed, his vocal synthesizer making it sound like a burst of static. "Tell me something I don't know, kohai."

I shrugged, thinking he'd say that. "Okay. I'm in the same boat as you- only in my case, I come from a universe where your life, up from your teenage years, is recorded in a seinen series. As such, I've got info on your past life, and your strengths as of now."

The badass across from me took this in for a moment, before shrugging. "Alright."

Oh. Well, that was easy. I mean, I figured he wouldn't be too shocked by it, but still. I nodded, continuing. "Now, why is this relevant? Well, Kujo-senpai, this is how." I lifted my index finger, pointing at his chest. "I know what your 'evil spirit' is, and how you can tame it. Go ahead, bring it out."

Jotaro's posture went blank for a moment, before he flexed his arm and Star Platinum flew out from his front, sending its fist screaming forward in a left hook- one I caught easily with my right hand, though it made me take a step back from the force. Apparently, its user turning into a Progen BS bot hadn't had an effect on its appearance- while it was a bit narrower of the shoulders than the manga depicted, it still looked like someone had shaved Hephaestus, given him Rogaine, splashed purple paint on him, and put him in a kinky Greek God outfit. I found it interesting that I could see it at all, actually, but I didn't know if I'd really get my own punchghost or if it was just a feature my ROB had put in me, so I didn't worry about it.

Instead, I pushed against Star Platinum, speaking even as I forced its fist away. "This, Kujo-senpai, is what's known by their users as a Stand- a manifestation of your fighting spirit, each with unique abilities. Now, this? It's pretty powerful as it is, I won't deny it- but it'll get even stronger, or at least it did in the manga. Now, however, you're going to need a specific training regimen, since you can't rely on throwing it against other Stands. Now, how much of what I just told you did you know before you were sent here?"

As Star Platinum returned to Jotaro, he crossed his arms and leaned his back on the stairwell's door. "None of it. All I knew was that I had something acting in my interests, mostly by beating the shit out of idiots and stealing stuff. I actually tried to lock myself up, right before this happened." He turned away, sighing. "I... I had no idea what I was doing. I'm not gonna call myself a good guy, far from it, but I didn't want any innocent people to get hurt because I couldn't control this thing. Then again..." Jotaro turned back to me, his 'expression' neutral. "...you know all about that from the manga, right?"

I nodded, the senpai's little monologue having sobered me a bit. "Yeah. Just wanted to check where in the timeline you were. Sorry if I, uh, brought back bad feelings there."

Jotaro surprised me by chuckling, pushing himself off of the door. "Don't worry about that, kid. At least now, I know I've got someone who can teach me to rein it in. Besides, if something brought me here, something can bring me back." The senpai's posture lost its humor as he directed his attention to me. "What I want to know now, though, is what you're getting out of this. Sure, it was nice talking it out, but I know that you wouldn't do this if you didn't think you could get something out of it."

Biting as that criticism was, I couldn't exactly contest it, so I didn't. Instead, I 'cracked' my neck. "That, Kujo-senpai, is simple." I lifted my arms to stick out from my torso, in a challenging pose. "I want you to fight me. No Stand, just fists and feet."

At that, Jotaro raised his 'eyebrow'. "...you sure about that, Mark? You know that even without my 'Stand', I'm no pushover in a fist fight."

I shrugged, a few points of light on my mouth plate lighting up to form a smile. "That's the idea. Whichever ROB- that's Random Omnipotent Being, by the way- put me in this thing, it left me a martial technique analyzer. I was planning on visiting some dojos originally, but you being here gives me a much better opportunity to train." I lowered my left arm, my right stretching out for a handshake. "So, how about it? I teach you how to boost your soul, you give me street-fu."

It didn't take more than a few seconds for Jotaro to decide, his hand gripping mine as we shook on our training agreement. Oh yeah, this was happening.

A/N: And that's the second post. Again, feedback is appreciated.

Galdric · Sep 15, 2016

Hmm, well this is interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of interactions Jotaro and your SI have.

One thing though, I think you may have missed a word in the first line of the first post.

So Many Disadvantages, So Little Time: In which ROB is a dick to make Ron Jeremy envious, and the SI cannot into Progenitor.quote]

Eldritch-Orphan · Sep 15, 2016

Galdric said:
One thing though, I think you may have missed a word in the first line of the first post.

Polandball reference.

As for Mark-Jotaro interactions, as far as I've planned, they're going to act in an agent-commander partnership formally, at least until they get more allies, while maintaining a minor kohai-senpai dynamic when they aren't kicking ass and taking names.

wornchalice8081 · Dec 31, 2016

sorry for necro but is this dead or are you just having a hard time writing or getting time to write

Khan_Panther · Dec 31, 2016

wornchalice8081 said:
sorry for necro but is this dead or are you just having a hard time writing or getting time to write

Pretty sure this is necro.

Next time just send him a PM or start a conversation asking about the thread.

Edit: He is still active on the site doing other things,

Mods don't hit me please.

So Many Disadvantages, So Little Time

Recent threadmarks

Eldritch-Orphan

Eldritch-Orphan

Galdric

Eldritch-Orphan

wornchalice8081

Khan_Panther

My Muse stole my Necronomicon & pen

Recent threadmarks