by Andrew Jones
Verse VI
The Power of Vengeance
Blaze grumbled in pain as she looked up weakly, feeling oddly hot. There was no breeze, just the heat that had set within the area. She heard one of the guardians unlocking some chains, hearing the chain lock hit the ground. It sounded like it hit some stone, as the iron of the chain lock dented. She grunted from the echoing sound, before feeling herself lift up higher, and soon thrown into an iron cell. She gasped fearfully as she quickly crawled to the iron door and watched as the Guardian picked up the chain lock and lock up the door again. It glared down at her, while the other guardian patrolled away from the cell.
"Don't do anything reckless." The Guardian said.
Blaze frowned at it as it turned to accompany the other guardian. She watched their patrolling patterns, they weren't leaving. They were guarding the area until they were given permission to do something. She sighed heavily as she sat back. The cell was small, so she couldn't stand up completely. She looked around, noticing the iron bars of the cell wasn't entirely strong at all. So she reached back and tried to retrieve one of her weapons, but her weapons had been taken away. She's seen that the guardians had taken them and armed themselves with them.
Upon finally laying back from going offensive, she felt a bad pain coming from her arms, where the guardians had been carrying her. She looked down and grunted from how the guardians had dented her upper arms. She could see the imprints of their grips on her arms.
"C-Chip, give me an idea of our exact location," Blaze whispered.
"Detecting... Error, servers are offline within this region." Chip answered.
Blaze shouted as she hit her fist against the iron bar, "Damn!"
Kryptonite peeked around the corner. He had been standing beside an abandoned car. It was a pickup car, which allowed him to jump to the back and peer his head from the top. He has seen the guardian machines patrolling the area, but he hasn't seen where they hid Blaze. He jumped over the edge and plopped onto the ground, quickly rolling to the corner of an odd looking building. As he looked around the corner, he saw the guardians pulling a switch. The switch allowed the building structure to crush a rusted car that was within an opening. Two walls crushed the car, then a structure from the ceiling crushed the car, then the walls, ceiling, and the floor crushed the car. He gasped as he saw that car had been crushed into a block, only to be tossed into a sea of crushed cars. He was speechless as he looked back at the guardian machines. They looked at each other before looking directly toward Kryptonite. He immediately pulled back and hid behind the corner, hiding from the machines. He panted as he tapped on the symbol, similar to the one Blaze had on her forehead. A holographic picture, only he could see, flashed in front of his eyes as he looked at his compatibility list.
Within the compatibility list, he noticed two icons that were unfamiliar to him. His body shook, knowing that the guardian machines had detected him and pinpointed his location. He gasped as he ex-'d out from the holographic menu within the picture and pulled out a little sword that he primarily used. He heard the footsteps of the guardian machine, but he could only stand and become frozen from fear. But he managed to peer from the corner and see that the guardian machines had departed away from that area. He sighed as he rolled from his hiding spot and had a look around.
The Junkyard had so much rusty and broken machine parts around the premises. It was a gated area, and it appeared to be that only the ones with a key card were able to gain access. Kryptonite was just lucky the opening of the gate was broken, staying opened permanently. But he had expected the security of the area to only increase because of that.
With no luck finding Blaze, he decided to follow one of the Guardians, seeing them talk and then split ways shortly after. He didn't know which one to follow, so he just went with the feeling in his gut and followed the one going the right direction. The Guardian approached an office, and just passed it without giving it a thorough look. Kryptonite took advantage of that, so he walked up the small set of stairs to get up to the doorway and jumped, turning the doorknob quickly and then just pushed it open. It was a rusted door, so pushing it open exhausted him. The room was dark, apart from the gap of light being exposed from the window with no curtains. He jumped onto an office chair, then jumped onto the desk where he saw scattered paperwork throughout the top, with two drawers from the desk open as well. He picked up one of the pieces of paper that looked important, seeing that it was signed by Siyuri herself. It had nothing on it at all, but the sentence, 'Armagna - 00196.33489.99091.89841.22370.'
Kryptonite narrowed his eyes at the page, finding it suspicious that Armagna was on the page. He had heard of the mysterious network, but he didn't know much of it. He must've known as much as Blaze about it, and was apparently as curious about it as she was as well. He folded the page up into a tiny fold and put it in his pocket as he glanced outside, seeing the sky grow into a more red-ish color.
"Hey, asshole!" Blaze shouted loudly from her cage. "You see that red sky, right? You know that bad weather is on its way, right?"
A guardian followed the voice, finding it's way to Blaze's cage, laughing at her. Before it could find the right words within its Dataspace, it used her battle axe to harshly nudge her cage, making it shake.
"That could be a way we could get rid of you, traitor. My senses tell me it'll be one of those acid storms."
Blaze gasped as she shook the cage herself in anger.
"Let me out of here, or so help me- I will cut you into more pieces than there are in this damn Junkyard!" Blaze yelled as she glared upward at the Guardian.
The Guardian chuckled as it hit Blaze's cage one again, dropping her battle axe right in front of the cage and laughing harder, walking back away from her. She panted from her sudden boost of anger, staring down at her weapon as it was dropped on the ground in front of her. Like it was teasing her. She looked up as she saw some lightning bolts from above, but no sound of them at all.
Kryptonite walked outside as he looked at the numbers on the page. He had some kind of feeling that the number pattern represented something, it felt too familiar for him to just ignore them. But as he stopped walking, he heard a footstep, immediately seeing a guardian standing right in front of him, holding Blaze's spear toward him.
"Intruder! Reveal the purpose of your presence at once!" The Guardian shouted.
Kryptonite gasped with surprise, as he noticed Blaze's spear. He put up his paws, not saying one word to the Guardian. It laughed as it put aside the spear and grabbed the teddy bear by his paws and carried him away.
Blaze sat up again as she heard heavy footsteps again, seeing a guardian carrying Kryptonite over to the cages by her. It opened the cage right on top of her and tossed Kryptonite inside roughly, locking the cage from behind.
"If it doesn't rain today, then you two should expect to be crushed like those rusted cars. That's what happens when you defy Queen Siyuri." The guardian glared at Blaze as she herself glared up at it.
"Queen... Siyuri?" Blaze questioned, with a confused look on her face.
"Indeed. Queen Siyuri has guided the lives of us machines down the enlightened path. You'd be going down that same path if you didn't betray her trust."
Blaze frowned and punched the cage, punching toward the Guardian, "I didn't betray her, you fucker. She obviously made that shit up, and expected all you dumb machines to believe it!"
The guardian laughed, "When you're being smashed by the Junk-crusher, I'll be smiling as I watch your miserable life come to an end."
Blaze frowned as the guardian was tapped from behind from the other patrolling guardian.
"Stop pestering with the enemy." The other guardian snickered. "I've got word that Queen Siyuri will be coming to give us a check. It is essential that we have Blaze and this strange teddy bear crushed into blocks before she arrives."
Both guardian machines nod to each other in agreement as they rush off to the Junkcrusher. Blaze sighed as she leaned back against the cage wa
lls and looked up at Kryptonite. As she spotted him up there, she closed her eyes and sighed again. Kryptonite looked concerned as he noticed Blaze's condition, he looked around in an attempt to find a way out of the cage anxiously.
"What are you doing?" Blaze asked, still having her eyes closed.
"I'm trying to find a way out, what else would I be doing?" He answered, shouting at her.
"You're not going to find one, you might as well give up while you have the energy."
Kryptonite shook his head as he laid down on his stomach, facing down the cage to watch Blaze.
"Why are you giving up already? I have the experience, my last partner and I always found a way out of predicaments like this. And he was dumber than you." Kryptonite explained.
Blaze looked a bit curious as she laid on her back and looked up at Kryptonite.
"You had another partner? What was he like?" She asked.
"Well... He was like you, in some ways. He wanted to always do the right thing, even if that mostly gotten him into more danger. But he had a will stronger than anyone I've ever met, and even me- who has huge self-confidence, he even helped me stay positive. So, in a sense, I guess his positivity sort of rubbed off on me."He chuckled. "I can help you become more positive now."
Despite Kryptonite laughing, and trying to make this situation enlightening, Blaze kept the same calm look on her face.
"What happened to him? Was he a machine, as well?"
Kryptonite shook his head and sighed, "No. From what I remember, he was killed by-... What's her name...? I know she was The Dark One... But that's way in the past... No. This situation was before the machines were being created, I think."
Blaze sat up, thinking deeply as she did. "You were alive even back when Humans truly ruled this world, the Ancient Times? How interesting..." She muttered to herself.
Just as she was thinking, they felt a shake as they saw both of the guardians before them. They're talking must've distracted them enough to not notice the guardians approaching them. But they didn't speak, they just picked up each of the two cages and walked toward the Junk-crusher.
"The Queen is almost here, she'd be quite disappointed if you two weren't disposed of by then." One of the guardians spoke.
"She would probably behead us if we don't." The other Guardian spoke after, just as the two laid down the cages in front of the Junk-crusher itself.
It was huge, as Blaze and Kryptonite both watched the machine crush down two rusted cars, seeing the cars instantly become square blocks. As it fell down to the sea of cars, they could hear a silent explosion from the impact, it must have been a long drop to the bottom.
Blaze grunted as she looked at Kryptonite to the side of her.
"These two are acting strange, it's like they're being brainwashed or something," Blaze whispered to Kryptonite.
Kryptonite nodded his head as he pulled out the folded page he found in the office, and passed it through the cage bars to her, "This note has Armagna on it, with a bunch of number patterns. I couldn't debug it though."
Blaze looked confused as she took the page in her hand, occasionally looking up at the guardians as they prepared the junk-crusher. She unfolded the page and saw the sentence. She pressed both her fingers on the symbol within her forehead to contact Chip.
"Chip, I need you to analyze this number pattern and hack it," Blaze whispered.
"Analyzing." Chip answered. "... The pattern of 00196.33489.99091.89841.22370 was present from the network administer from the factory, containing high doses of the Armagna Network."
Blaze grunted as she gripped the page in her hand, then crumbled it in her fists.
"It's the bot number of the administer from the factory... And Siyuri must've known what she was getting us into. She may be a reason for why the machines at the factory were corrupted or at least knows why..." She whispered as she turned to Kryptonite.
Kryptonite nodded his head slowly, "It... Makes sense."
Suddenly, they heard a loud sound. The Junk-crusher had started moving again. Blaze looked and saw a series of tiles that would move anything on it toward the crusher. One guardian stood next to a lever that would turn on and off the tiles, and another guardian began to step toward Blaze and Kryptonite, moving it's mechanical face to where it looked as though it had an awfully big smile.
"To kill is the best feeling I've ever had since being stuffed into this mechanical suit. Queen Siyuri helped me realize that. That I was a guardian, her guardian, the Machina's guardian. When I first killed a traitor of the village, it felt odd but strangely right. Siyuri told me that what I felt was a pleasure, arousal. Something Humans would feel all the time. And to feel what Humans feel is the greatest pleasure for a machine, not matter the machine's intentions."
Kryptonite grunted, "So... Machine's true intentions are to be Humans?"
Just as the Guardian picked up both Blaze and Kryptonite's cage and prepared to toss them onto the moving tiles, they heard Siyuri stop right behind them. She stood with a deceiving smile on her face or a snicker. An evil smile that would curse Blaze's dreams more so. She crossed her hands and appeared to have wanted to be invisible while the guardians did as they were told.
Verse VII
Bow to the Machine Queen
The image of the Junk-crusher would scare even the bravest of warriors, especially when looked upon up close. Blaze grunted as she looked back at Siyuri, still having that evil-like smile on her face. She frowned, kicked the cage while the guardian was holding it. It was holding the cage by the top part, which was a little carrying pad enabled for better grip. But as she kicked harder, the cage slipped right out of the guardian's grasp and dropped on the ground, popping the top of the cage right off, like it broke off.
Blaze fell right out of the cage and looked up at Siyuri. Her frown was pure, pure hatred toward Siyuri. But Siyuri kept her smile, and her arms remained crossed. Blaze grunted as she stood up on her feet slowly, not noticing her face had some dirt from the ground.
"Some Queen you are." Blaze scoffed at her as she brushed some dirt from her cheek. "You can't even trust your guardians to protect you. You gotta eliminate any threats toward you!"
Siyuri chuckled, "Blaze, you had a chance to feel this sort of power. The power that chose me as well. You see, as Synths, we have the power to control these machines. We are the rulers of the Machina, the next race of Humanity!"
Blaze shook her head, "You've lost it."
"No, Blaze. In fact, I've found it! This Network is not our enemy, it's what will help propel us to what it is we were meant to become!"
Kryptonite called out to her as he pulled out a petty sword from his pocket and tossed it to her. She glanced back and quickly caught it, aiming the blade toward her, "You're wrong. This is just murder. It's not helping anyone."
Siyuri laughed as she opened her arms wide, allowing her hidden machine army to storm around them in a circle. Blaze looked around her at the machine, lowering her weapon slowly before looking back at Siyuri.
"No. This Network's enhancement has helped me become what it is I was made to become. The Machine Queen!" Siyuri shouted with laughter.
"Siyuri... Do you think Akemi would approve of this?" Blaze asked.
"I don't care."
Siyuri snapped her fingers as the machines quickly ran to each other, and with a bright light emerging, the machines entwined into a bigger machine that overshadowed the entire Junkyard. It had a big head that seemed to dangle lifelessly, probably because of the weight of it. Two large arms, but multiple legs from each and every machine that entwined within it. It also had the machine's eyes everywhere on the machine, the red eyes shined brightly as they all aimed right at Blaze. As the machine was mutating, Siyuri aimed her little blade toward Blaze as her own eyes instantly changed into a red color, forming a more calm and lifeless tone on her face.
"Now, my children, attack the target," Siyuri muttered.
The giant machine roared into Blaze before a light emerged from its
mouth as if it was charging a powerful beam. Blaze quickly dashed backward but tossed the petty sword into the mouth of the giant machine. She saw it enter inside the mouth, immediately hearing the sounds of malfunctioning and loose parts inside. The head of the machine jolted back like it was alarmed, and shot out multiple lasers. Blaze gasped, jumping and sliding passed each laser with ease.
"Kryptonite, I need a weapon!" Blaze shouted as she again dodged a laser.
Kryptonite gasped as he looked at the guardian who was still holding the cage he was in. He frowned with sudden confidence as he pulled out a blade saw from his pocket. Pushing on the button, the blade of the sword moved like a chainsaw, allowing him to easily cut through the cage's bars. The Guardian frowned as it pulled out Blaze's spear and attempted to do damage to Kryptonite, but he slid down and chopped at the guardian's leg, slowly slicing it off and forcing the machine to fall to the ground, dropping the spear. Kryptonite rushed to grab the spear but inside kicked it toward Blaze as he saw the guardian reaching for it.
Blaze sensed her spear approaching her, as she was compatible with it still. While not looking, she jumped into the air and caught the spear mid-air and charged into the giant machine's lifeless head, striking its weak spot. The machine roared, as Siyuri frowned, watching as Blaze landed securely on the ground next to her.
"Don't you hear that, Blaze? The roaring? The cries of the machines you are killing in cold blood!?" Siyuri shouted.
"Shuddup!" Blaze yelled back at her.
Not looking at Siyuri, Blaze charged to her, striking her with her spear. But Siyuri blocked her strike with her sword. The two of them pushed against the other's strikes in an attempt to disarm them, but Blaze easily swipes away her sword and kicked her to the ground. As Siyuri tried to get up, Blaze stepped on her stomach and put the sharp tip of her spear right on her forehead, stabbing into it enough to see blood dripping from both sides of her forehead.