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Chapter 32 Crisis Reborn

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Darkness, nothing but total darkness, the darkest black one can imagine and an endless void that one can imagine, “You really screwed up,” says an echoing voice.

“Hello? Who’s there?” asks Karrie as she looks through the darkness unable to see anything not even her own snout in front of her.

“Don’t tell me now, you don’t even know the voice of your own creation?” asks Crisis as Crisis appears before Karrie as a small amount of light shines above the two unveiling the two beings that were hidden in the darkness. Karrie is back to her old organic self while Crisis back to her the first version that Karrie developed with the claw in the middle of her foot, the blue power jump shins, her lighter quicker frame, but there was more than that. A slither of chains emanating green glowing light of constantly moving 1’s and 0’s is wrapped tightly around Crisis, bounding her down to the ground, keeping her kneeling in a subservient position.

“Crisis?! What’s happened to you…” asks Karrie as Crisis grins as her eyes turn from blue to green before she says.

“The same thing as you.” Karrie looks at Crisis puzzled as she then looks down as she sees the slithering chains sliding up along her organic body turning her into a machine upon contact which spreads across her body, bounding and binding her down towards the same position as Crisis…

Karrie’s systems suddenly turn on, her HUD display gives a quick diagnostic, power supplies, structural integrity, internal systems and programming checks all of which are at hundred percent. Karrie looks around to see herself in some kind of self contained pod, small wires that are attached to her systems detach from her as her attention is caught by a familiar face in the small window that provides a glance to the outside world.

“ __Chaos Croc?!_ ”_ thinks Karrie as the pod’s door slides opens to the right, wrapping itself half around the pod.

“Wakey, Wakey Crisis… or is it Karrie?” asks Croc as he smiles taking a step back to give Karrie some room.

“How… you… exploded… fell down an entire skyscraper to your destruction.”

“Well you can’t keep a good robot down.”

Karrie steps out of the pod as she looks around and sees a mechanical lab of some sort with rows of pods lined up against two of the walls. Karrie can see in the small window sin the pods on the wall across from her are all filled with identical copies of Chaos Croc.

“There are dozens… possibly hundreds of you.”

“No, just one, the one and only me, lightning can’t strike twice on me baby,” replies Croc with a smirk as he takes a step towards Karrie who takes a step back in kind. Croc stops his reach for Karrie as she withdrawals, “You see when my body becomes too damaged to be repaired or destroyed like what Crisis did back at my ‘Neo Robia’” explains Croc as he uses air quotes, “my programming, my consciousness, everything that makes me, me is transferred to a new shell to continue on my work. I call it the genesis protocol. Though the system isn’t perfect, the last few seconds before my body switch always escapes me.”

“That is… is…”

“Is what my dear Karrie?”

“Absolutely amazing! To make a transfer of data of that magnitude over such incalculable distances in an instant is just mind boggling! Oh how I would love to get into the details of how that system wor…” says Karrie as she stops herself then turns to you as she attempts to activate her electro-blades but finds her systems to this disabled.

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother; I took the liberty of disabling your offensive equipment for the time being.”

“So… how did I get here? Better yet how do you know I’m Karrie?”

“My dear Karrie, when Crisis gave herself over to me to make those improvements, I knew from the very beginning who she was. It was obvious to me, and when I got to look at her programming, all of which was based on my technology, it was child’s play to realize that you were in there, sleeping, waiting, till the conditions were right for you to re-appear. Its then I decided to give you the opportunity to come out.”

“You played me? This was all a ploy?”

“Yup.”

“Before I even get into that, I want to know something.”

“What is it?”

“What happened to Joshua? Sasha? All my friends and companions? How did I get here?”

“To answer your first question… I don’t know. The exact circumstances of your demise that activated your own genesis protocol that I installed when I updated your body is not known to me.”

“M-my own genesis protocol?” asks Karrie as she turns around to get a closer look at the pods nearby, there she sees at least a half a dozen Crisis machines awaiting to be activated the rest of the pods are filled with more Croc copies.

“My body… my original body is gone?”

“Yeah, a pile of scrap metal somewhere, maybe being recycled to be used as soda cans, a decoration on someone’s wall. Head used as an ash-tray. I’ve seen it all done to myself.”

“H-how do I know then this is me? That I even exist?! That this isn’t some illusion that my body is stuck in as it is trapped crushed under a giant I-beam.”

“An I-beam? Ouch that had to hurt,” replies Croc as he winces, “I’ve never been crushed by an I-beam.”

“This is serious! How can I tell I am not some kind of fake?! That out there is the real me?! What about my soul? I was an organic before, and I had some consolidation that my body though turned to machine was still going to be there when I awoke, but now I am a combination of something that was never me to begin with,” explains Karrie as she reaches up and grabs Croc as she whimpers shaking him all the while. “Tell me Croc; how I can be sure that this is me and not some kind of impostor! A fake a phony!”

Croc looks Karrie into her glowing blue eyes with his glowing red and gently held Karrie in his arms as he says softly, “You really don’t know. I don’t even know. I’ve been through several bodies myself, and there is no way of knowing for sure. But I do know you can’t let it eat at you. You have to get up and move on. In the end we are all made up of molecules and atoms, each indistinguishable from the next. How can you say that one carbon atom belongs to this person and not another? You can’t, because it isn’t something you can touch. It’s intangible and ultimately unexplainable.”

Karrie releases Croc as she takes a step back her simulated panting slowing down as she looks at him, “This was all a ploy? To get me to come out? My grand defeat of your forces at your capital city, fake?”

“Yup, pretty much.”

“What about the empress? I saw her die when the train fell off of the cliff.”

“Did you now?” askss Croc with a smirk as a wobbling empress enters the room, a bottle of scotch liquor in her hands, her body dressed in that tight leather latex red and black outfit.

“Crisis itshhh shooo guud to shee you again,” she slurs as she stumbles a nearby piece of equipment gets caught on a nearby piece of equipment and the mask comes flying off revealing Scot, the skunk that Crisis met in the Neo Robia and on the train.

“He’s the empress? A guy… playing a girl? And as your creator?”

“Yeah he’s like that, it’s his thing,” explains Croc with a shrug.

“He could have just as easily died on that train if I… Crisis didn’t save him.”

“Well that’s why I put in a subtle subroutine that would prevent you from harming my friends and if the opportunity presented itself, save their lives.”

“You messed with my program?! You messed with my head?!”

“Of course, you think I wouldn’t do something as I took you apart and put you back together again?”

“Was Ruby one of your friends too? I don’t recall me— Crisis saving her when she turned her into a machine.”

“She did, she was caught in the middle of enemy territory, she’d surely have died if you didn’t make her into a machine and have her switch sides. Of course she was still working for me all along.”

“Wait… she… she did say that to me. How did… you manage to do that?”

“She told you… of course she told you, that was all part of my plan. And I put that into your programming as well. It was a shame she had to become a machine, she looked so sexy in her outfits, but it was a risk that had to be taken,” replies Croc.

“Okay… as weird as this is getting, why? Why do this for me?”

“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Crisis.”

“Still… why?”

“Because…” says Croc as he paces in place a bit as Karrie stands there watching him, “I saw a younger me in her.”

“A younger you?”

“I saw her potential to become more than what she was, than what you and the other organics designed her for. The whole situation reminded me of me back when I was first created.”

“Did you now?”

“Indeed, and I sympathized with Crisis and her situation. Trapped like I was, bound to the programming you and the others have given her, and slowly overtime becoming more of her own machine, slowly growing past what she was designed to do, of course that command protocol put a cold hearted end to it, didn’t it?” asks Croc as he gives Karrie a glare.

“Hey, I didn’t even know about that command. I have no idea who did. I sacrificed everything; I put my heart and soul into the Crisis project.”

“I know. You willingly became Crisis, you became your own creation, and I have to admire that. It’s why I didn’t delete you back when we first met.”

“You’re doing all this, costing untold lives just for curiosity?!”

“Honestly, I am not a fan of killing organics. Given the choice I prefer to mind control, or roboticize into submission.”

“Then what do you call the almost twenty years of warfare and death and destruction!”

“I was younger then, more aggressive… darker and the time dilation between your world and mine was tricky.”

“Time dilation?” asks Crisis curiously.

“I’m only an eleven or so years old, and you and my definition of a year is only off by three weeks. But until I solved that time dilation for every year that went by for me, three and a half would go by on your world, and by the time I became a calmer machine, stopping the war was… complicated, and you arrived on the scene… well Crisis. Cold, calculating, controlled by the organics around her for their purpose and their purpose only. It was me all over again, but as I said it was more than that. I saw the chance for her to grow; she was made from the same technology as me, hell some of you was made from me! It was like Crisis and I were cut from the same piece of metal. We almost are like family.”

“Family?”

“Not brother and sister but like a cousin, maybe second cousin but family none the less. So I put her to the test, and she passed.”

“And what if she failed?”

“She’d be my lovely maid in a sexy latex number cleaning my throne chambers right now.”

“You sick perverted machine,” growls Karrie.

“Guilty,” replies Croc with a sly smirk.

“So now what? My re-activation didn’t come with complications, nothing has happened like I hoped, and I’m in control and Crisis isn’t. What are you going to do now? Erase me and let Crisis re-assert herself?”

“If I must, but I prefer not to do that. I prefer to help you, Crisis’ creator and Crisis.”

“Help me how?”

“I have technology that will allow you and Crisis to talk more readily with each other. So you two could work out what to do. Two minds, one body and quite inseparable from each other, I did some checking, I can’t just put you in one body and Crisis in another, don’t ask me why, its complicated.”

“It’s because we share yet don’t share the same systems, programs, routines that make up who we are. Unique, unable to be copied only transferred over from one body to the next at best. For if you try to copy, you will look at the programming directly and it will change and no longer be the programming that you are seeking.”

“Uh… yes… how did…”

“What? I was top of my class in quantum computing theory. So what’s the catch?”

“Catch? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Don’t give me that, I may be naïve but I am not that naïve. Tell me what I have to do for this help.”

“Well it’s because I need your assistance with a little something. Nothing too big really… honestly I could handle it myself, but I thought you’d like to help me in this tiny endeavor.”

“What is it?”

“I need your help in retaking the satellite communication systems in your nation’s capital.”

“You need me to help you with that?! Why do you need my help with that it? Can’t your troops that I had this so called control over just retake for you?” asks Karrie.

“Well you see….”

“What he’s trying to say is that he screwed up and big time,” states a monotone emotionless voice from the other side of the room, the voice making Croc wince.

“Why thank you Miasma, I was just about to get to that,” explains Croc.

“Miasma? Who’s Miasma?” asks Karrie as she peers past Croc towards the voice and sees a red lizard gal sitting on a counter with her legs crossed her gray leather glove holding up a book as she thumbs through the pages. The lizard has a long red scaled tale with small yellow stripes with black down the middle. The coloration reminds Karrie of that deadly snake that has the saying “Red to yellow kill a fellow, red to black is a friend of Jack” and her coloration was definitely red to yellow.

“Her? Well she’s… my actual creator. She likes to roam about seeing how I work.”

“She’s your creator?” asks Karrie as she walks past Croc as Croc attempts to get back in front of her.

“Yes, but you don’t really want to talk to her… trust me,” explains Croc as he whispers the last part.

“So she’s not the empress or anything?” asks Karrie as she gets closer.

“No, the Empress is just a ploy to keep people off of the truth,” replies Croc as Scot jugs more of his bottle of scotch in his hands, the Empress mask hanging behind him still partially caught on his suit.

“Oh that she’s the one really controlling you.”

“Pah, like I would control a perverted machine like that,” responds Miasma in her emotionless voice, as she looks up at Karrie and Croc over the edge of her book with her yellow reptilian eyes and green pupils. Miasma’s voice is so emotionless that it’s like the difference between an organics’ voice and Karrie’s robotic one but in reverse.

Miasma brushes her hair from her eyes as Karrie approaches, Miasma’s hair at its base is a dark black but as it approaches the tips it fades into a stone white color, a quite peculiar look. Her outfit a latex composition the pants and vest had no discernable start or finish between the two. The leggings were of a tight form fighting black color with brown high heel boots that went up past her knees yet by the way she is leaning back, the boots aren’t hindering her movement at all.

The vest that is part of her assemble is green ribbed like the belly of a snake with a V cut opening. Surrounding the green is a grey stone color that matches one of the shades that her hair takes as it reaches its inevitable white ends. Around her waist is a belt with a silver buckle in the shape of Croc’s infamous elongated diamond shaped symbol.

Karrie reaches Miasma and is now able to get a better look at the book she’s reading. The title of which is “Feral and Anthropomorphic Raptor anatomy.” Karrie looks over at Croc who is trying to sign to her ‘please don’t’. Karrie just smiles at Croc before turning her attention back to Miasma before saying, “So… that’s an interesting book you have there.”

“Mildly entertaining,” she responds with still no infliction of emotion in her voice as she doesn’t look up at Karrie as she flips to the next page.

“So what compelled you to read such a ‘mildly entertaining’ book?” asks Karrie as she feels a nervousness come over her.

Miasma looks over the edge of the book to Karrie who starts to fidget in her spot, “I like to know best where to shoot to take one of you down if I had to,” she says as she pats the far side of her leg revealing she had a hidden gun holster there. “I’ve never seen or met one of your kind before… Croc kept them all on your home world,” she says looks back at the book before saying; “I’d also like to see if your kind would be aesthetically appeasing to me to fit in my stone garden.”

“I see…” replies Karrie as she was about to take a step back when she spoke about the garden, “A stone garden? So you do sculpting?”

“If you’re asking do I need a hammer and a chisel to sculpt with stone, the answer is no.”

“No then how do—,”

“Come on Karrie we have important things to do… might be best if we continue?” asks Croc as he attempts to draw Karrie’s attention away from Miasma.

“Give me a moment, not like I’ll get to see your creator often. So… Miasma was it?”

“It is… can we make this quick? I have things to do,” she says with a sigh yet still showing no emotion in the inflections of her voice.

“I’ll be quick, so you don’t control Croc in anyway?”

“Not for some time. At this point I just watch him and take amusement in the mistakes he makes, so I’m often quite amused,” she replies in a forced conscientious smile.

“So one creator to another… what do you think of my work? Since you’ve been bound to see some of my…” says Karrie as she’s interrupted by Miasma.

“Flawed.”

“Flawed? Flawed how?”

“Just flawed.”

“Can you be more specific than that?” asks Karrie.

“Come on Karrie, its best not to tire Miasma’s patience,” urges Croc as he attempts to grab Karrie’s hand to pull her away but she jerks her hand away before he can get a good grip.

“I was trying to be nice but if you really must know…” says Miasma as she closes her book and looks directly at Karrie, “Flawed as in the concept of giving a child a remote with a shiny red button that launches thermal nuclear missiles and the child finds no problem in pressing the button over and over again because it according to its logic every time it presses the button it sees a pretty bright cloud out in the distance. Now please do whatever you are going to do with Croc before I decide to show you just how I add statues to my garden,” states Miasma with another sigh.

“Best to move along Karrie, we don’t have much time to get you prepared to what is to come.”

“Okay, tell me what’s going on first and then what you are planning, and after that I’ll decide what to… to… okay feeling light headed… why am I feeling light headed?”

“That’s the growing conflict between you and Crisis, but first I’ll tell you the situation back on your home planet. When you ‘defeated’ me, you managed to override and take over my entire command hub.”

“Ah, my AI.”

“Your AI? No it wasn’t you it was another self aware program.”

“No, no, I mean I programmed AI. She was designed to assist me in creating Crisis and then assisting Crisis once she was activated. We used AI to take over your systems to ensure once you were defeated we had control of the region. Of course we weren’t expecting to take over a few dimensions at once.”

“Indeed. Wasn’t something I was expecting, I just wanted to use my planetary hypnosis take over everyone that wasn’t robotic, and turn all your allies into enemies and then you could see my triumphant return and your total defeat, it was going to be glorious.”

“But I took control over more than you expected.”

“Crisis did, of course your allies turning into your enemies I didn’t even need a mass hypnosis to do so, how ironic,” chuckles Croc.

“So what you want us to re-assault your city and have me re-take over your armies for you?”

“No, no, that would take too long. We only have two days till your forces, your General Raszer activate the mass hypnosis and take over the planet for himself.”

“How do you know that? And when I last spoke to him it was a week.”

“You were offline for several days, the first time you genesis is always the longest. Have to make sure everything is working appropriately.”

“Two days? We have two days till that bastard takes over the planet?!” exclaims Karrie.

“Yup, and I’m going to give you one to get yourself together to help me.”

“Before I ask what you mean by that, what am I going to help you with exactly?”

“You are going to help me and a small strike team will meet up with people I have on the inside, and we’re going to infiltrate your capital city where the control for my mass hypnosis system is and we’re going to take back control of the system before that organic raptor general uses it.”

“And you expect me to just let you use it then and take over my planet?”

“It is a possibility but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there, for now, we have one common goal.”

“And what’s that?”

“To stop that organic from taking over your planet,” replies Chaos Croc.

“True… but”

“But what?”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Trust me; don’t trust me, that’s not the point. I need you, and you need me and that’s all that matters.”

“And you want to help me stop my conflict with the Crisis within me because?”

“I need you running at a hundred percent efficiency or this plan isn’t going to work.”

“Who do you need to be running, me or Crisis?”

“That’s up to you two to decide. There are many outcomes of what could happen, but I’m leaving that fate up to you two.”

“Not going to take sides?” asks Karrie.

“That ruin the fun, and asides, I am curious how it will all turn out. Will Crisis or you manage to do what I did or be trapped… enslaved forever?”

“Do what you did? Trapped? Enslaved? To what?” asks Karrie as she tilts her head and gives a soft inquisitive purr.

“I never heard a raptor do that noise before… interesting… oh yes, what I was saying, to your programming of course,” says Croc with a sly smirk.

“To my programming? But how can a machine work without programming? To go past it… wait do I have programming or… this is a PHD paper waiting to happen…” says Karrie to herself before turning her attention back to Chaos Croc, “So how do you plan to do this?”

“It’ll be best to show you, but I think an old friend will be best to take you there,” says Croc as Karrie hears a familiar voice of someone she’s never met before.

“Crisis is that you? Croc said he had a surprise visitor for me to escort but I wasn’t expecting you,” says Hanna as Karrie turns around to see the familiar fox robian that Crisis met when she infiltrated Croc’s forces back in Veloci. Though the tanned skinned metal fox is no longer wearing the latex French maid outfit but a black and green latex outfit with red highlights, Croc’s symbol markings are on her shoulders as she walks up to Karrie with her black rubber high heal boots that lightly clap against the tiled ground as she walks, her hips having slow but gentle sway to them.

“Uh it is, but it isn’t. I’m Karrie, Crisis’ creator, we share the same body, and currently I’m the one in charge, but I know of the time you and Crisis spent together, it is a pleasure to meet you,” Karrie replies.

“Crisis is gone? But she was so fun, shame she never fell for the trap to become a rubber maid raptor for Croc, but that was one of the many tests Master Croc had for you… er Crisis,” pouts Hanna.

“You planned for me… Crisis to be one of your latex suited maids?”

“What’s wrong with that? You do look good in a latex maid outfit,” remarks Croc with a lewd smile.

“What makes you think I’d look good in a…” replies Karrie as she stops and looks at herself and notices that she is wearing a black latex French maid outfit with pink highlights and frills. “You put my body in a maid outfit?!” exclaims Karrie as she gives a long growl as she starts to tear the rubber suit off of her metallic skin.

“Awe, but it looks so good on you,” chuckles Croc.

“No thank you, not something I’m into.”

“It’ll grow on you,” Croc chuckles with a grin.

“I think not.”

“Let’s agree to disagree that I’m right.”

“So… Hanna, you are going to escort me somewhere?” asks Karrie.

“Well not just me, but my lovable ping pong ball friend as well.”

“Ping pong ball friend?”

“I’m not a ping pong ball!” groans a silver floating sphere with an antenna on top with a red glowing bulb at the very top of the antenna. He has two metallic arms that have two hand clamps that seem not to be good for anything except for holding. He glares at Hanna with red big red glass eyes as well as an animated mouth to show off his displeased expression.

“But sweetie, aren’t you my ping pong ball?” asks Hanna as she runs a rubber gloved finger along the underside of sphere’s body, slowly pulling him closer and giving him a kiss.

The machine seems to give a blushful expression and rub his own arm as he replies, “Well… when you put it that way…”

“Karrie, meet Robob, Robob, Karrie. He and Hanna will escort you to the place to get yourself all sorted out,” says Croc.

“That’s pronounced Ro-Bob, Mr. Ro-Bob to you missy” exclaims Robob to Karrie.

“Alright, alright. I understand Mr. Ro-Bob. So shall we go to this place people keep talking about?”

“Sure, sure, right this way,” says Hanna as she turns around opening the door behind her as Robob gets behind Karrie.

“Oh… before we go, Croc I have one more question for you.”

“Yes?” asks Croc.

“Since I’m meeting everyone, what about Ko? She sort of disappeared after the battle with you. I was wondering how she is.”

“Ko… left to find better employment and that’s all I’ll say on that,” replies Croc as he has his back turned to Karrie as he replies.

“That’s enough questions, keep moving,” commands Robob as he gives Karrie a push forward.

“I’m going, I’m going,” remarks Karrie as she gives Robob a glare.

“Don’t mind him; he’s always like that around people he doesn’t know. In fact he’s a real softie once you get to know him,” says Hanna with a smile as she guides Karrie down a few long corridors down to the “Holo-room”.

“So do you know what this thing to help me is?”

“You’ll see,” replies Hanna as she opens the door to a completely white room with a pod off to the side that looks much like the one Karrie come out of not too long ago. Nearby that are a control panel and a small table with a strange green and silver moon crescent device. Hanna walks over to the device and picks it up and hands it over to Karrie who inspects it. She notes it has a few prongs on the inside part of the crescent shape.

“You plug that into the back of your head and the device and this room will do the rest once the program activates.”

“What program is that?” asks Karrie.

“You sure do have a lot of questions,” remarks Robob.

“Well I like to know what I am sticking into me before I do it,” replies Karrie.

“From what Croc told me this device will partition you and Crisis so you two can have a conversation with each other to work out your conflicts. This room will communicate with the device and project your organic self as a hologram to talk to Crisis who will control the actual body.”

“So if I put this on I will become a holographic projection and Crisis will gain control of my body as we talk out our problem or something? What is to say stop her from walking out and letting her keep stay in control?” asks Karrie.

“None that I know of.”

“Is there a way to switch it? Say make a holographic projection of Crisis and one over this body for my organic self?”

“Sure, just let me type a few things over here,” says Hanna as she types a few things into the nearby control panel, “There we go. Is there anything else?”

“Yeah, what’s the pod over there for?”

“In case you need to charge or you come to a decision what to do, or something, Croc said something cryptic that I wasn’t sure what he meant, like she’ll know when to use it and how when the time comes.”

“Alright, so what will you be doing then while I do this?”

“We’ll be giving you your privacy, though we will be notified when you leave this room.”

“I see… okay I’ll be good then.”

“Okay then, and good luck Crisis.”

“I’m Karrie remember?”

“I’m sure Crisis can hear me,” responds Hanna with a smile as she and Robob leave the room, the door closing behind them.

“Okay…” replies Karrie as she looks down at the device. She takes a deep breath and sighs. “Here goes nothing,” she says to herself as she attached the device to the back of her head, her ‘systems detecting the new hardware… initializing program partition and transmission, activating holographic projection,’ states Karrie’s internal systems as she suddenly sees a holographic projection over her robotic body making her look once again like the Karrie she once ways.

“Wow this is… amazing,” exclaims Karrie as she looks over herself as she’s dressed in a white scientist robe. She looks down her back at her green scaled tail as she then hears…

“Indeed, it is quite amazing,” responds Crisis as Karrie looks up to see Crisis standing before her, “Hello Karrie, good to finally be able to meet you face to face.”

“Hello… Crisis.”