Post by Rodraeg on Apr 18, 2015 18:59:02 GMT -5
Foreword:
Hello, my fellow knights. It is good to be in such good company again. I wrote a little story and in advance, I am very sorry for the bad English, it is not my native language, and I forgot a lot of words over the past ten years. But I wanted to write a story. Intentionally it should have been longer, but I became insecure half way, because of my lack of words (my vocabulary is just a shadow of what it used to be).
Please let me know if you like it, or not. And if you do like it, good luck encouraging me to write the rest.
Side note: The name Rodreag Talvassa Delbane is lent form my most favourite character, from the book "Im Zeichen des Mammuts". (You have to admit, if someone would introduve himself as Sir Rodraeg Talvassa Delbane, it sounds impressive.)
Evolution
It can not be washed away. The rain is pouring on and on, but it does not matter, it can not be washed away. The desolation, the dirt, the filth, this whole crap in this place, it can not be cleaned, not by normal means. If it would rain on, it could become a real flood, but it would only wash away the innocent, the weak. The so called strong would endure, think they are chosen or tell themselves what hard kind of motherfuckers they are and use it even more as a reason to feast upon the weak and exploit them.
I shift position, lay my head back and look into the sky. Some dark cloud is hanging above us and the rain is falling down, in heavy, thick and long drops. In earlier times, it is said, the rain was very pure kind of water, one of the best in quality. I close my eyes and let the rain flow over my face, it feels like oil, and tastes like shit. This is mother nature unloading our pollution and mistreatment right above us, just like we deserve it.
Not a single soul is out. Everyone got himself to safety. I can not blame them. The sensor in my armor shows the light radiation in the air. This was not there, before the rain came falling down. The armor gets the order, the horde of nanites comes to life, the thicker parts on my neck become smaller, the additional stored material shapes a helmet around my head. For a moment, the eyes in the helmet shine bright red, like some demonic monster, right out of a horrorvid. A brief, funny moment. The automated process injects some chems into my bloodstream, to get rid of the radioactivity.
Here I am, sitting on a dirty bench, drenched in slimy, oily water, watching the dirt piles becoming bigger and bigger, tougher, because the rain makes it as hard as concrete. Welcome to Camden Street, a place where no building has intact windows, if it is not even an entire ruin. I have a few safehouses myself, in this neighbourhood. Every single one of them, has a luxury pad installed, so that I am always fully rested, before I set off to work. Just one of these luxury pads is worth a whole building of the rest I assume. Most of these people are struggling to survive. The get by, day by fucking day.
As I think about it, a chilling feeling runs down my spine. My armor suggests a stimulus, to make me feel better. It is declined. When this whole buisness started, I was hooked up on chems in the process. It was the usual procedure, everybody did it. When they told me the training is over and sent me out into the real world, this went on, right before every job, I stimmed up, to get the extra edge, to go the extra mile, to keep the upper hand in every situation.
Rushed by some tough fights, which I survived, more dead than alive, tihs feeling was all I wished for. Again and again, more and more dangerous, but my one and only real friend tagged along, he was glad, to be of service, to help out, to be trained by me, how the big boys played. Bloody hell I trained him... I got him killed! Together we wanted to do some job, I can not even remember for which faction in this forsaken shithole. We stimmed up, we did what we were told and got ambushed. I ran away, wanted to lose our pursuers and he rushed right into them. He did not stand a chance and they took him down very fast. They were so fast, they even almost got me, after they killed him.
The next couple of days are lost to me. I took every chem and stim that could be found, just to erase this memory. He wanted to leran from me and I got him killed, he was my responsibility and I let him down, because I did not know our limits. He was just some crappy brawler an me, I was just some stupid shot, that did not know shit, but thought otherwise. So I got my one and only friend, my ally killed. Rest in peace – Clive Zep.
And rest assured, till then, a lot of Knight Horizon blood was spilled in your name. These fuckers did not even know, why they were occasionally terrorized.
In the end, I realized, the stims got Clive killed. Had I been clear minded, Clives death would have not happened. So I stopped to use stims completely. It can not be said for sure, but I think it saved a lot of lives, my own included.
After having learned the lesson the hard way, I stuck around my neigbourhood, in my league. This was my field of operation, the slums, with the addicts, the brutes, the whores, the whole crap of the city, or just people that try to get by, with the few they have.
Clive came from around this place. He once asked me where I came from. He got no answer. Not because I am a big, walking mystery, I just do not know the answer myself. But I have come a long way, since then. I trained, became better, in everything, worked myself up, climbed some ladders. Then the neighbourhoods changed, the jobs got tougher, the pay better.
But this is, where it just began, the training became even more intense, the jobs even more riskier, the pay became top notch. Now I am an elite knight, everybody wants to be my friend and not one of them wants to be my ally.
I worked my way into every back room, in every corporation. I got some real high risk jobs, they call them operations. There shit can really hit the fan and it often did. But it was woth it, every single time. Not because of the pay, I was not paid, they never paid me. I got something better out of it and they were very angry, very, very angry about it. But here I am, with the best assault rifle Mars could design, my second weapon is a fine machine pistol from the house of Yakashima and my armor – it links itself with the quantum computer in my head. I can control the damn armor with a mere thought. AzTek invented something real nice. I could clean the programm almost alone, but a friend of mine, Kidd, took another sweep, he is even better in hacking than myself.
I also made another new friends and allies. I trained them myself and they became my comrades – family. A friend that has your back is worth more than every credit, in the world. I know this, they know this, we trust each other. I am the boss, I give the orders, I am the knight, but they are my family – my responsibility.
All of them aspired to become knights and I told them, what it means to become a knight, what I learned, during my life as a knight. The corporations erased me, my whole self. Whoever I was, this person was killed during the process. I do not even remember my old name. For a time, I was nothing more than a grim, sinister ghost. ;-)
Now I am a person again. But what have I been before? I can not imagine I was a family man, but did I have a wife, a girlfriend. Did we have dreams about our future together? My friend decided not to pursue becoming a cyber knight any longer, after they were told about the memory wipe. Instead we came up with a plan, it is a foolish thing – impossible to make real.
„AAAAAAAAAH!!! Mommy, help me! Mama!“ Screams rip me back into the real world. My head rushes alarmed from one side, to the other. Where did the screams come from?
„Come on child, scream again!“ I whisper to myself.
„MPH!“ some loud mumbling, as if someone interrupted screams, reach out to me. The armor enhances my hearing, gives me a direction and I run off. A brief moment later I can see them, a brute, with a heavy pistol. He looks tough, not because he is, because he wants to scare off people. In this heavy rain, it is not even necessary, nobody is out here.
Nobody than these butchers and their innocent victim.
Nobody but a helpless mother, looking for her child.
Nobody but a knight in shining armor.
When the brute realises I am rushing him, he lifts his arm and tries to take aim. But I am an elite knight, faster than anybody, I am to close already. My left hand snaps to his arm, the shock gloves do their work, he screams from pain. The palm of my right hand hits his nose and crushes his fucking skull against the wall. I grab his gun and shoot him in the chest, two times. His scream and the noise from the pistol interrupt the butcher, he turns to me, I can see his ugly face. He was about to harvest the child. I shove the dead body of the thug in his direction, just to increase his insecurity further. The dead body falls, blood streams from it. I let myself fall to the ground. The butcher rises his hand, his lips are moving, he wants to say something. Lying in the dirt, the angle ensures the child is no longer threatened to be hit, by a stray shot. A heavy caliber bullet lets the butchers head explode. Smoke rises from the weapon, I start to breath again. The mother comes running, screaming for her child.
These are the free streets, some kind of freedom it is... This is called anarchy. All kinds of warlords reign this place. But they can not even protect their people, their children, their future from mere organ harvesters.
I do not know how many children I have rescued from this exact same situation, too many and too many were lost to them. I look at mother and child, lying in each others arms, hugging tight. This is what it has to be! Not some fucking organ harvesters and warlord thugs running around, terrorizing people!
I have had enough!
I am well aware that I am not qualified, that I am too much of a villian to really be a knight in shining armor. But it does not change the fact that I aspire to be it.
I am the Cyber Knight, Sir Rodraeg Talvassa Delbane. I was not born to be this, they made me. And now, I am going to evolve into something else!
„Kidd, Vector, commence operation!“
Shockingly nice people here.