A Time of Crisis: Chapter 3
Chapter 3, icon by Chaos Croc
Chapter 3 Setting up the Facade
Crisis releases another guard from her infectious bite as he salutes and walk off. Crisis looks over at the first guard she converted and says, “Thank you for bringing him and the others to me.”
“It was my pleasure Mistress. That should be the last one on duty for this part of the base,” states the guard.
“Excellent, and with the commander’s sleeping quarters just up ahead, there is little to stop me from putting my plans into motion,” she states as she moves down the hall.
Crisis stealthily moves into the commander Koma’s sleeping quarters, the room is nearly twice as large as any that she has been in before, with soft red carpeting rather nice looking furniture, with a separate dining, and plenty of other little luxuries that a commander of a secret military base deserves. The place is extremely neat and well organized, expecting of a strict military type. It doesn’t take long for Crisis to make her way to Koma’s bedroom.
Crisis’ eyes glow in the dark room as she eyes the commander from across the room. The soft carpeting quiet Crisis’ footsteps which makes it easy for her to approach the general without being detected.
“Once I have you I can put my plans into motion,” thinks Crisis as she moves over the Koma, her mouth opens to reveal her nanite tipped fangs, ready to flood the commander’s mind with her mind controlling nanites. Just as she is about to infect Koma, Crisis hears a click, and in that instant Crisis jumps back and to the side as a gunshot rings out, the sound of the bullet wising by Crisis just barely missing her as the bullet goes into the nearby all.
“A smart man always sleeps with his gun,” says Koma as he sits up pointing his gun in the direction of Crisis. “It was only a matter of time till that hunk of junk Croc would find and infiltrate this facility; I’m surprised it’s taken him this long. Lights on,” says Koma as the lights flicker on and Koma takes better aim at Crisis’ head.
“I don’t work for Croc, he’s my enemy,” Crisis replies as she notices that Koma is squinting as his eyes are adjusting to the lights. Crisis takes her chance, activating her jumper boosts, which are part of her lower legs; the extra push allows Crisis to make a lightning quick strike towards Koma and his gun. Crisis rushes to knock the gun out of Koma’s hands, but not before he manages to let out another shot. Koma’s gun flies across the room landing far away from the two with a heavy thud.
“What the… wait I know what you are, who created you! You are not ready, and this is why! I command you to stop this immediately!” commands Koma as Crisis pins him to the bed, both of his hands are held tightly over his head.
“I created myself, and I’m more than ready to defeat Croc by any means necessary.”
“Release me you big green piece of scrap metal!” he growls.
“Sorry I don’t take orders for weak and pitiful organics like you,” responds Crisis as she moves in to infect the general with her bite.
“There’s no way you’re going to bite me!” yells Koma as he manages to place his feet onto Crisis’ chest and kick her away from him. Crisis body flies back hitting a nearby wall with a heavy thud, leaving a notable dent in the wall, but not before dragging Koma off of his bed due to her tight grip around his wrists, “Where are my guards, they should be here by now,” growls Koma.
“They’re right outside awaiting my orders like good obedient soldiers that they are,” responds Crisis with a grin as she pulls herself back to her feet.
“Damn you, how dare you do that to my men, you’re no worse than that metallic fiend Croc,” he growls.
“How else are you going to beat him? By being all nice, kind and asking politely please leave us alone we mean you no harm?” Crisis sarcastically replies. “Don’t worry General you’ll understand what I mean soon enough. My nanites are quite affective,” says Crisis with a sly grin.
“What are you talk…” asks Koma as he trails off as he just now notices the scratch along his belly scales, and his remembrance that Crisis’s sickle claws also can inject nanites into her victims, “No… I must fight this!” growls Koma as he puts his hands on his head. He shakes his head and closes his eyes. Koma can feel to his horror his mind changing before his mental eye. His thoughts slowly being corrupted as he knew deep down this was wrong but it was a battle he was quickly losing.
“Three… two… one,” counts Crisis as she stands there patently.
“What are your orders Mistress Crisis?”
“That’s a good boy, now here’s what I want you to do for tomorrow to bring this entire base under my control…” says Crisis with an evil smirk.
Twelve hours since then have passed. The base is full of activity as a long line of raptors stemming from the base’s infirmary. The sound of one of Crisis’ mind controlled doctor’s yelling, “Next!” , is heard as a light green female raptor walks into the room with a not too pleased look on her face.
“Bloody waste of our time, we are at war and Commander Koma wants us to go through a base wide physical check up? Absurd” she says with a growl.
“I’m sorry Miss but Commander Koma felt it’s a good idea to get everyone’s record up to date and make sure everyone has taken their vaccination shots. Last thing he wants is everyone to get sick and slow down our work,” says the doctor as he adjusts his white uniform, as has the female raptor take a seat on the nearby examination table.
“Yeah, yeah, but does he have to have the entire base lined up for this?” she asks with a growl.
“It is what the commander wants, we don’t question his orders. This isn’t fun for me either, I’ve started this early this morning and I’ll be doing this all day. The faster we do this, the sooner we can get this done,”
“Sorry I didn’t mean any ill will against you,” she replies with a sigh.
“It’s alright, let me just do a quick check over you,” says the doctor as he does as standard physical examination. “All that looks in order, now let me check if you are up to date on your vaccinations,” he says as he thumbs through his papers, “hmm I see there’s one you need to take, luckily we have that one in stock.”
“Really? I swore I got them all done before being transferred here.”
“Ah you know there’s always one that slips through the cracks, good thing we caught it now rather than later.”
“Yeah,” she replies as the doctor prepares the shot of a silver colored liquid and quickly injects it into her. “Ah you know this isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, by the way what’s this shot for anyway?” she asks as the doctor finishes.
“Well you see…” he says trialing off looking at the raptor’s expression before saying, “It’s for that pesky free will of yours, it’s infected the whole base, and might damage Mistress Crisis’ plans to defeat Croc. You do understand don’t you? That you’re needed to give up your will to save everyone else.”
“I completely understand, I shall serve Mistress Crisis faithfully,” she purrs.
“Excellent now you may return to your post.”
“Of course,” she replies leaving out of the back as the doctor yells “Next!” once again.
At the same time deeper within the base back at the robotisizer stands Crisis amongst several roboticized scientists, dressed in their white lab coats.
“Are you ready Koma to become a glorious machine?” asks Crisis as Koma stands in the roboticizer.
“Of course mistress Crisis it will be my honor,” he replies.
“Excellent, start the process Joshua,” she commands.
“Yes Mistress,” replies Joshua as he’s the only organic scientist in the room. Joshua starts up the sequence like he’s done dozens of times before. The roboticization energy flows over Koma as his body is transformed into a glorious machine. His black scales turning into black segmented metal, similar to that of Crisis, but their body design is closer to their organic nature with the sickle claw on the inner most toe. The black metal raptor with glowing blue eyes smiles at Crisis once the process is complete.
“Unit C-0012 reporting for duty,” he replies.
“Good, very good, you shall make a good butler to serve my needs,” says Crisis.
“Excuse me Mistress but can I ask a question?” asks Joshua.
“I told you it’s not safe to keep him, he’s already asking questions, it’ll start like this but it’ll only get worse,” says the AI into Crisis’ head.
“I know the risks, and I have precautions in place just incase he tries to turn against me. My databanks tell me Croc has a few willing organic servants, it doesn’t hurt to have a few of my own,” she replies to AI internally before replying to Joshua, “Yes Joshua what is it?”
“I see why you are robotisizing all those who worked on you or could have commanded you, which I shall say thank you for giving me the choice to join your ranks when ready, but why are you calling the female’s maids and the male’s butlers? I don’t see the strategic significance of it.”
“One, I want to, and two I have needs of my own, and it be far better when my R&D team isn’t working on their job is to fulfill those needs of mine, so I can put more focus on the real problem, defeating Croc,.” Crisis explains.
“Yes Mistress.”
“And don’t think they are all for me, I’m leaving my first two converts to serve your organic needs so you can spend more time serving me.”
“Ah yes, Arissa and Shasi, can I call them that instead of Unit C-0001 and Unit C-0002?” he asks as the two named machines appear before Joshua.
“You called sir?” asks Arissa, her body a silver metallic blue, her glowing blue eyes show a calm nature as she has black tiger stripes down and along her back, which is completely covered by her lab coat.
“What do you need?” asks Shasi, as the cobalt blue with silver stripped raptor stands ready to serve Joshua in her own lab coat as her eyes give a soft blue glow.
“You may, or you can call them Unit 1 and Unit 2, I prefer the latter but they’ll recognize their former names just the same.”
“Really?” asks Joshua.
“All of their memories are intact, but now they have undying loyalty to serve my needs and purposes to defeat Croc.”
“No need to robotisize me for that Mistress I already give that to you.”
“Perhaps, I’m still debating.”
“Of course Mistress and that’s why I don’t mind this collar you placed around my neck,” he remarks as the blue metallic collar is just barely visible behind his shirt collar.
“You don’t think I wouldn’t put a little insurance in case you turn on me? If you do try, that collar will inject you with my nanites and you will never disobey me again.”
“Of course Mistress, and your idea to infect the entire base is working well, within a few hours we’ll… you’ll have everyone under your control.”
“Wonderful, and once that is done we’ll start to mass robotize seventy percent of the base and then begin to set up the base as if Croc attacked and converted most of the soldiers. You and a small group will have activated me early in order to help push back the attack and we succeeded, with the help a few robotisized volunteers and robotisized soldiers I took back from Croc’s control. That way they’ll be more willing to trust me and with that trust I can start building an army to defeat Croc and his minions,” says Crisis with a chuckle as her eyes flicker between red and blue for brief moments.
Elsewhere in the country of Dromaeosa in a bombed out city that only weeks ago fell under Croc’s control. The city and its surrounding suburbs used to be a sprawling city of over three million organic inhabitants, but now it’s filled with a few hundred thousand robotic Croc minions, busily searching and hunting down any survivors that could still be hiding in the city.
The job is difficult amongst the rubble; every building shows signs of the fierce fighting that took place over the past few months. The battle was costly not only for Dromaeosa but for Croc’s forces too. Countless of Croc’s minions gave their lives, and countless more of his machines were destroyed in the fighting as their parts are strewn across the battlefield.
A line of recently captured organics, their minds already infected by Croc’s nanites are now ‘willingly’ walking towards the robotisizer that Croc has recently set up within the city. Several of his robotic minions guard these prisoners while Croc himself stands off to the side, inspecting his handiwork.
A largely green robot with a long green segmented tail gently sways behind him; the red glowing pupils in his eyes are the only color that can be seen against the black color of his eyes. His smooth head has a large irregular four sided polygon that at the very top points to the tip, his black metallic skin in a thin strip around his waist looks much like a belt has a red insignia that matches the shape of this head piece. In the lower half of the head piece is an oval shaped red hypnotic gem.
His finely crafted green metal chest has a red oval piece in the center. His shoulders are green spheres with circles on top, the shoulders connect to his powerful metallic arms which are black on the upper half and green on the lower connect to black hands with silver finger tips which are just idly tapping against his green thighs.
His knees have thin black strips around them with red circular metal symbol that matches his chest, are on the top of his knees. The rest of his body is from the knees down are green except the soles and front half of his feet which are a reflective black. A few of his organic minions that he keeps around are dressed in green, black, and red uniforms that mimic Croc’s own metallic body design.
In a nearby bombed out high rise building, where the top third of the building is completely destroyed and massive holes within the structure makes one wonder how it is still standing lies a brown scaled raptor camouflaged under rubble. The female raptor is has a very strong and powerful physique. Against her body holds onto a massive sniper rifle that would be almost comical at the size in any other situation.
She remains quite as she peers through her gun sights as she takes aim at the back of Croc’s head. Her breath slows as she puts pressure on the trigger, holding back any and all excitement of how wonderful of an opportunity she has to take out this metallic monster.
The gunshot echoes through the buildings as the bullet travels towards croc, but just as it’s about to reach it’s target one of Croc’s minions walks into the path of the bullet which quickly penetrates its head, the bullet then explodes completely destroying the drone’s head in a ball of fire. The explosion knocks back Croc as he yells.
“Capture that sniper! I want them alive!”
“Fuck, I was so close,” she growls as she quickly gets out from underneath the rubble, her body long sniper rifle is effortlessly strapped to her back as she attempts to relocate.. Hoards of Croc’s minions storm building moving up each floor as they spread out to quickly search for assassin that tried to take out their great leader. The brown raptor in her military uniform moves quickly through each room, burned papers fly about as the wind blows, the building rocks as the building strains to remain upright. The sniper has her pistol out as she’s prepared to defend herself against anyone that would try to capture her.
The sound of the heavy robotic foot steps rumbles through the building getting closer and closer.
“Got you!” exclaims one of Croc’s minions, but his success would lead to his untimely end as the raptor greets the Croc’s robotic fox minion with a quick bullet to the head.
“Yes you got it,” she chuckles as she continues to move. More of Croc’s troops rush to her position that was given away by the gunfire. She moves through the building as Croc’s minions corner her in a room that is half bombed out. A large gap is between her and more of the building.
“Damn it,” she growls as she turns around to see three robotic minions coming after her and after a quick dispensing the ammo in her pistol four more robotic minions come up to replace them. The raptor quickly looks across at the risky jump across a massive gap with little assurance she’d make the jump.
Without another second of hesitation she jumps for it, and for a brief second she thought she has bought herself some time before one for Croc’s flying drones catches her in mid air. The raptor struggling viciously as she tries to break free of the drone’s grip, not caring the fall would mean her own end. She even manages to turn herself briefly upside down as she kicks the machine in the face with her foot, but that only leads to the raptor growling in frustration and pain.
As she realizes the futility of her situation, her ammo spent from her pistol and her arms unable to reach her sniper rifle, she reaches into her jacket and pulls out a pressure trigger which snaps free the moment she pulls it out from her vest.
The device triggers a set of explosives she has set in the high rise building, which takes out the last few key supports of the building, causing it to collapse upon itself, crushing all those inside the building. Dust flies up and around the area, incasing the raptor and her captor in dust, but she alas is still unable to break free as she is brought before Croc, her arms bound and held tightly behind her back, and away from her sniper rifle.
“You’re just full of little surprises aren’t you?” asks Croc his red eyes glowing through the dust while the raptor coughs and gasps for air his voice smooth, yet totally robotic devoid of anything organic, but there is a sense of emotion in his voice. “You think you could have taken me down with just a single bullet, how naïve you organics are,” he continues on as he quickly moves his hand inside of the raptor’s mouth, before pulling it out again, revealing a small capsule the raptor had hidden in her mouth. “Of course I know many of your tricks and I’m not going to let you use that one and get the last laugh.”
“You’re a monster,” she says in between a few coughs, as the air starts to clear up, revealing the two more clearly.
“I’m no monster. I am simply bringing peace and harmony in the universe by making everyone my happy and obedient robotic slaves. You give up your free will in return for stability, eternal life and health, and happiness in servitude to me, you can’t beat that I assure you.”
“I rather die than serve you,” she growls.
“That’s what they all say… say have we met before? You look familiar.”
“Like I’ll tell you,” she growls.
“You will soon enough, once you see things my way,” says Croc as he opens the raptor’s coat to reveal several sets of six, thirty caliber rounds strapped to the raptor’s body. “My, my, what large bullets you have there. From what I could tell despite their size they can only penetrate into a single robot, but then it explodes destroying it from the inside out. Impressive, it certainly could have done some damage if it hit me,” he replies.
“You may have stopped me but we will in the end stop you,” says the raptor as Croc gives out a hearty laugh.
“Do you know how many organics have said to me? Thousands and each and every one of them who would have ‘stopped me’ now faithfully serve me, and are quiet happy about it too. You organics will never be able to stop me.”
“Not with what we have in store for you,,” she growls.
“Oh? And what could this be?” he asks as he brings his face towards the raptor.
“Like I’ll tell you!” she growls spitting into his metallic face.
“I think you will,” says Croc as he wipes his face clean while the gem on his forehead begins to glow.
“I won’t give into your evil tricks!” she growls as she struggles not to look into the gem, but Croc easily holds her head and keeps her eyes set right onto the gem, the raptor’s struggling steadily fades as time passes. The female raptor’s eyes become fixated on the gem. Her eyes soon gain a glazed soft relaxed look to them.
“Now tell me what’s this thing that is going to stop me is?” he asks.
“I’ve only heard rumors that we are creating something big and strong enough to stop you,” replies the raptor in a hypnotic monotone voice.
“Tell me what you have heard. I have noticed you organics have been stealing my equipment.”
“I’ve only heard rumors of creating a super robot to destroy you, and or creating a large robotic army to fight yours.”
“Interesting, anything else you can tell me about this?”
“I’ve heard the name Project Crisis a few times as part of the rumor but nothing more, but I hear it will save us and destroy you master Croc.”
“I see, I won’t robotisize you just yet, you’re more valuable to me as an organic than as a machine for now, but let’s make sure you completely obey me,” says Croc as he releases a gas from his finger tips, the raptor breathing in the gas, as nanites flood her body, and flooding her mind, erasing any will to resist Croc’s commands. “You will continue to follow your country’s orders and report back anything that will be a value of my plans; I want to know more about this project Crisis.”
“Yes Master Croc,” says the female raptor as she is released, giving the green robot a salute.
“Tell me what’s your name?” asks Croc.
“Sasha Shrilla.”
“I expect big things from you Sasha, now go,” he says as the raptor nods and disappears back into the rubble.
“8402,” says Croc as a random robotized drone from his exploits from his home planet.
“Yes sir?” she asks.
“Bring me Ko I need her for a mission.”
“Yes sir Master Croc,” says the drone as she walks off.
“I wonder what futile plan these organics are up to now,” thinks Croc as he resumes his inspection.