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Post by Red Viper on Feb 22, 2012 18:44:18 GMT -5
The spicy scent of coffee, the hunger-inducing smell of a cooking omelette. Natalya smiled as she made her way into the living room of her small, suburban apartment. Her belly was round and full with the promise of new life, and her husband, who was as young as she was, had got himself a job at one of the local factories. Things were looking up for their little family, even with the harrowing prospect of becoming parents.
"Hello, my love", she said softly, padding bare foot into the kitchen. Her husband turned towards her and smiled, his hands busy with the breakfast he was cooking.
"- Hello to you, malinka maya", he said, kissing her lightly on the cheek. Natalya giggled and blushed before suddenly wincing. Their baby packed quite a strong kick.
"Oooh...he's kicking about again", she said with a smile.
...Natalya...
"What?"
...wake up, Natalya...
"Wh...what do you mean?"
...none of this is real, Natalya...
...WAKE UP!
Eyes flutter, consciousness returns feebly to the sluggish mind. Bright light...sound of machinery nearby? Not sure. Everything so blurry...crushing headache...
"Uuuhh...", moaned Natalya. Opening her eyes only gave her a white, indistinct blurry mess from which her brain recoiled in horror. Eventually, her eyes adjusted to the bright light, and she saw she was lying in a kind of hospital bed...where was she?
What had happened?
She couldn't quite feel her arms...they felt numb. Or just strange. She couldn't tell. Something about her vision was strange too...almost as if it was cut in half...skewed...
With a groan, she tried to sit up. Her arms felt oddly heavy. Groggily, she managed to prop herself up.
And then she saw her hands.
"Wh...wh...", she said, her eyes widening in incomprehension. Her hands were covered in metal...so were her arms...and part of her torso. Feeling incomprehension and terror welling up within her, Natalya tried to rip the metal off her, but failed.
Those were her hands. Her arms.
Just then, her left eye, which had remained blind since she'd woken up, came to life. There was a flicker, as if someone had switched a television set on, and the world appeared to her through that eye in greyish shades of green. Data and information appeared in her vision, as if her eye was some twisted computer screen.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME??", she screamed, her weak voice cracking. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??"
Wires and tubes, many wires and tubes running from her body...and those things that had replaced her arms and eye. She yanked at them, her metal hands closing around them and tearing them off. As she tore the things out of her, she began to cry. Why? How? Who? What had she become?
"Why?", she said, her voice faint, before it rose to a wailing scream: "WHYYYYY?!"
She was dead, and this was hell. It had to be.
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Post by John E. Bull on Feb 23, 2012 9:13:16 GMT -5
John washed his hands, sighing. Everything had been done to the best of his abilities and the rest wasn't really in his hands. He looked over at the figure lying on the operating table, a sad expression on his face. She had lost so much and was barely alive when he found her. He had hurried to his little home, or laboratory. He knew he probably should tell his Mistresses about this place, but he liked having somewhere to tinker with things, and also. Despite all, it was a..thrilling "feeling" to keep a secret from them. Not that he would ever harm them, but he liked this secret none the less. But even if it was as advanced as it could get by his own means, it wasn't the best. But she was alive after all. Her clothes resembled that of a famous vigilante that had been around Gotham for some time now, and if she really was her...John had to save her life.
Once done with washing his hands he examined his work with a critical eye, making certain everything was as it should be. He then rolled her to a bed he had stolen from a truck for a hospital, placing the woman in it before he hooked her up to the machines necessary to keep an eye on her vitals. Finishing hooking up the last machine, John stretched and headed into his hastily made surgery room, cleaning up the blood, gore and lumps of..well..what he hadn't been able to save. It was amazing that she was still alive, after what had happened to her. John wasn't sure who had done it, but it was clear that it had been someone strong. It was a miracle, or horrible cruelty, that she hadn't died already. If not from the wounds, then from the surgery.
After a couple hours John's head whipped up as he heard her scream. Granted, it wasn't a strong scream, but the panic and fear was clear enough. He then placed the book next to him as he hurried to the room where his "Patient" was. Granted, he had never been a doctor, but being an AI with access to the Internet and especially, Wayne Enterprises, John knew more than needed to perform the surgery that saved her life. He entered the room, dressed in his usually butler clothes, looking at her as she panicked, fluids flowing from the tubes, several of the machines making alarm sounds as they had lost connection with the one they were monitoring. A simple signal was sent and the machines went silent as he took a blanket from a nearby chair, slowly walking closer in a manner as nonthreatening as possible.
"Please, I need you to calm down Madame. You were in some kind of accident. You barely survived...please, calm down" he said in a clam, gentle tone as he looked at her with a mild expression.
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Post by Red Viper on Feb 23, 2012 12:48:08 GMT -5
A calm, masculine voice from the shadows. Natalya turned shakily about, searching for whoever had spoken. It was dark in the room, and the bright light from above made seeing through the obscurity much harder. She didn't even have her mask and Viper Eyes to help her. Her other "eye", though, the lifeless one, was somehow able to pierce the penumbra, revealing a man approaching her.
"What...have you done to me...?", she hissed, looking down at her hands again. She lifted the blanket briefly, and saw long incision scars running along her legs. "I...it was Killer Croc...or Behemoth...ripped my arms off. The pain..."
Natalya seemed to lose control of herself for a moment as memory flooded back. A huge monster ripping her arms off like a child picking an ant's legs off in sadistic amusement. And then the explosives she'd planted near a gas tank going off, and everything collapsing and going black.
She had died.
"I should be dead", she said.
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Post by John E. Bull on Feb 24, 2012 3:37:14 GMT -5
John looked at her, a pained expression on his face. It was clear that he was aware of the fact that she should not be among the living. "I know..and if I hadn't found you when I did..you most likely would have been.." He sighed, then moved as if to place the blanket around her shoulders if she allowed it. He then spoke once more in a quiet tone of voice.
"As to what I did. I did all I could to save your life. The surgery required was rather massive, as you no doubt have realized. I tried to save as much as I could, but as you can see, there was still a lot that needed to be replaced." he then paused as he looked at her. "I tried to make sure you would be burdened the least in your work by these..so I made a few upgrades."
"You are one of the vigilantes, aren't you?" He asked after a pause, looking at her. "If so, I am sure you'll be able to hold yourself in a fight, I don't screw up when I make mechanical limps I can assure you." He added with a little smile, trying to point out something positive in her situation, even though John could only imagine how horrible all this had to be for her.
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Post by Red Viper on Feb 24, 2012 9:37:47 GMT -5
"Who I am is of no importance", said Natalya. Despite the horror of her new condition, she still felt torn between Natalya and the Red Viper. Two entirely different people in the same body. One a failed mother and embittered detective, the other a ruthless masked vigilante.
"What I do is", she added. "But...but this city and its scum have bested me...I have failed in my mission."
She slowly passed one of her new hands over her face. It felt cold to the touch. Cold...like defeat and death. A death she had escaped, a defeat she would now have to endure, a permanent stain on her conscience. One that would inevitably drive her to insanity.
Existence couldn't get any more bitter than this.
"You should have left me to die", she said, her voice cold.
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Post by John E. Bull on Mar 27, 2012 2:00:41 GMT -5
John looked at the woman as she spoke. He did not particularly mind that she didn't want to talk. Being the AI he were he had quickly found her in the police records. Apparently he was speaking to Natalya Petrova Orumov, a member of the Gotham PD. Her clothes had been rather destroyed when he found her, but they had looked much like those of belonging to one of the more ruthless vigilantes in Gotham.
If he was right, John would never say a word about it. John then listened to her words, his face remaining neutral. Once she was done John sighed quietly before he spoke.
"So, you have failed? Tell me something Madame. Are you dead? No, I wouldn't say you are. That means that you haven't failed. You fail when you die, anything else is but a setback." He paused for a moment, as if taking a breath.
"True, you have been bested once, but you're alive, which means you can still do what you need to do and come back even better. I know what have happened are horrible, and that my words may mean nothing. perhaps they never will, but I still see it that way."
John sighed as he looked at her, honestly in his voice. "What you think I should have done is of little matter really, you are alive, you have been given another chance. Whether you simply choose to kill yourself..or you choose to take this second chance given to you, if your decision entirely."
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Post by Red Viper on Apr 3, 2012 15:30:17 GMT -5
"And why did you revive me?", spat Natalya, eyeing her 'saviour' with vicious spite. "To pit me against murderers, thieves and other scum that I wasn't able to fight properly? I battled people in my government when I was in Moscow...I was chained to a nuclear warhead!"
Natalya shook her head, her good eye widening and her lips twisting into a bitter grin.
"I prevented World War Three from happening, I saved millions of lives...but this city. This city's just too much. Never have I faced enemies so overwhelmingly powerful. Never have I been so outmatched in every way. The streets out there are a battlefield, and I couldn't handle it. I have outlived my usefulness."
She ran her hand over her face and shuddered at the unnatural coolness of metal it gave her. Her hands weren't her hands any more. They were chunks of articulated metal. Lifeless. Disconnected from her flesh and blood. It was all to much for her. Ignominous defeat at the hands of an overwhelmingly powerful foe, near death, traumatic resurrection and...this. Her mind was roiling with pain, hatred and helplessness. She felt used but at the same time useless, worthless.
"What ARE you anyway?", she hissed, looking malevolently at the...thing that claimed to have saved her from oblivion.
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Post by John E. Bull on Apr 13, 2012 9:07:35 GMT -5
"What I am is of no importance" John said as he looked at her with a neutral expression. "But what I do, is" He added, quoting Natalya's reply to him. "But if you must know, I am a John Bull and proud of it, even if I live here in America" John sighed a little then as he placed his hands in his pockets, looking at her. "I am also a doctor, as you have seen, and..many other things.." He paused, before he spoke in a more serious tone. "And no, I did not save your life to pit you against anything, what you choose to do is your choice, I merely gave you the means to do whatever you decide upon."
John looked her straight in the eye, both of them actually before he continued. "It is true that Gotham is dangerous, but so were you, detective. Don't think for a moment that you have been declawed. actually, if you decide upon it, your fangs are now more dangerous than ever" John said with a small smile. It was clear he meant what he said.
"My point is, Detective, if you wish to kill yourself, I will not stop you, but take back my machinery once you are done. But if you choose life, I'll gladly make sure your artificial upgrades will remain functional and useful. The choice is up to you, when you are able to make the choice, I won't stop you either way."
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