The following is the original September 11, 2014 release of Terrance & Urabe’s Alien Assassination Adventure, a novella by Natalie Neumann. Natalie does not recommend that you try to read the original work due to its low quality, structural issues, and grammatical errors. Instead, she encourages you to read the summary included in Volume 10 of The Saga of Vincent Dawn and the development history described in Volume 06: Terrance & Urabe’s Alien Assassination Adventure of Natalie Rambles About The Saga of Vincent Dawn to better understand the content of this novella.
EVENT 1: NICE TO N.E.E.T. YOU!
I am honestly not entirely sure where to begin in terms of telling this tale. Do I open with the story of my life before getting to this event? Well, I do have a very clear recollection of the events that transpired over the three days, which is what I’m here to talk about, and most of what I need to tell does come up in the story, so I’ll just start at 17:00, 5:00 PM, in 2015, May the twenty-second, a friday. I had just sent out a rough draft of a profile I planned on using for a blog I was relaunching its destination was the computer of my friend who, held the handle of, Aku_Mako. I think it’d be best to simply place it here without a single comment from myself.
“Terrance Honyaku is a freelance Japanese to English translator who got his start back in 2012 when he started translating and subtitling multiple anime series for a variety of groups. From there, he quickly became engrossed in the world of fan based translations, branching out into the realms of manga, light novels, and video games. While he is often open to helping others with projects, he recently got a professional translation job so forgive him if he is too swamped to help you translate a comic from Pixiv. He is currently working on the official translation of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Flash.”
What followed was a very broad list of things I have assisted in the translation of, only a few of which were official projects I made a profit from and were done for a company who was officially distributing the product in question. However, the provided paragraph’s probably enough reason for Aku_Mako’s response. “Yikes, that’s one pretty sorry sounding profile description you’ve got there, my good man. You do know you’re trying to make yourself look like a master of the English language, so people’d expect you to be better at wording things than… this.” I sighed before typing back my half-baked excuse. “I know, I know, I’m just amazingly terrible at selling myself. I mean, I probably should just post some of my work, even though most of my professional work isn’t out yet or has my name on it, which sucks. Still, that full Captain Rainbow translation might prove otherwise.”
“Terrance, this is your nest to yuck it up about whatever the heck you want! Make it personal and give the world a taste test of who you are before the entrees that are your reviews, discussion posts, and whatever the else you feel like.” Aku_Mako replied, giving me a kick in the ass for the project I had been planning for a while. It was nothing that complex, just my way to be a semi-formal opinionated asshole in my own controlled environment. Y’know, just a bit of self indulgence that may lead to something of a following. Certainly would need to be through writing, seeing as how I had a difficult to ignore lisp.
Before I could even agree with Aku_Mako, they shot back with, “Also, don’t tell me about how you got a job like that!” Immediately followed by, “Congrats though.” I took in a sigh before trying to end the typed conversation, which had been going on for its standard length. “Well, it’s been nice, but I don’t want to act as a crutch for you to stop studying and I do have some work to do, so I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” To which Aku_Mako replied, “Dude, finals are over, I’ve just got to go to Graduation on Monday and then begins the search for a summer job. But I’m sure I can find something, talk to you later.” To tell you the truth, I knew very little about Aku_Mako, just that they were in the same timezone as me and had compatible interests with me. Not even so much as their gender, let alone what they look like. Maybe that’s why I found it easier to tell a half lie to them despite unquestionably being the only person I could call a friend… Depressing information aside, I had finished my quota for this week and just wanted to get some dinner.
Exiting my bungee chair, taking my eyes off of the two monitors connected to my thousand dollar computer, and looking over looking over my large room filled with collectables that would add up to god knows how much money, I left my room to go downstairs. Now, I probably should just throw this out there, since I’m sure a ton of you readers would not know, but I was born into quite a lot of wealth. It’s a long story that comes up in this tale, but to give you a quick idea, my single mother hasn’t had to work a day in her life. She has and does work part time, but she got ten million smackers when she was fourteen. Again, will tell that later. Point is that she prepared some food for me, beans, rice, and zucchini with some soy sauce if you must know, but instead of leaving our interaction at a simple thank you from me before I scampered off into my room, she initiated a conversation with me.
“Terry, everything going alright with your translation?” My mom, Juniper Honyaku, asked me. Here’s the part where I’m suppose to describe her, and as weird as it is to say, yes, my mom certainly was, and still is while I’m at it, pretty damn attractive for somebody with a seventeen-year-old. Even the fact she was thirty-one was a surprise from people as she certainly did look more like a sister who was barely even ten years older than me. Although I suppose that’s not uncommon with Asian people, even if it is half Japanese and half European mutt like my mom. She also dressed like a woman in her mid twenties with a simple purple T-shirt and tight jeans over her, and imagine that I am saying this as reluctantly as I can, ample figure.
“Everything’s going fine, mom.” I told her, trying to sound reassuring even though she could probably tell if I was fibbing by simply looking at my face. “Really? That’s good to know. Does that mean you may be able to take a class or maybe even two at Oransen Community College?” She asked, quickly going into something of a running occurrence in my life. I quickly murmured something about not being entirely sure as I had to translate a couple thousand words every week before jogging back up to my room… only to then awkwardly run back down and grab a spoon, making my departure seem all the more disjointed.
From there I did my usual nightly routine of checking out the wide variety of shows reliable old CrunchyRoll put out, and more or less peer editing the translation in my mind while pondering sending them some notes on what to change, which I had done in the past. I often do understand why the translations have been made and certainly do respect the decisions on the company’s behalf, but certain decisions are and will continue to be debatable. I suppose that one could argue that translations must not be completely direct as they are often made for different cultures entirely, but I am pretty anal in terms of making the experience not differ between people simply due to their inability to understand another language.
Now that I’ve promptly made myself look like a complete and utter dork, which I would hardly argue with even though I prefer the term nerd. I should get to the real event I want to talk about. You see, after my dinner, at 18:32 I was debating whether or not I should drop a certain show halfway through its very mixed run, when everything went to tinfoil, my vision faded out. I felt like I was having a heart attack, stroke, and was being stabbed everywhere all at the same time. Nothing prompted this as far as I could tell, but it did not change the fact that I quickly lost consciousness and was thrusted into the most eventful night of my life.
EVENT 2: THAT BROAD BE PURE SIN!
As my senses gradually returned, saying I was being bombarded with unfamiliar sights, sensations, and the sort would be putting it lightly. Firstly, my vision was clearer than it ever had been as I was the sort who was cursed with the ever vile gene of terrible sight and could only perceive reality through glass placed before my eyes. Not that I could make out many details as my reality was being augmented by little bits and pieces of information I could not comprehend in the slightest was being shown to me, as none of the characters were recognizable and all I could make out were a couple exaggerated outlines and symbols popping up all around an ultimately larger than normal field of vision. But beyond all the Google Glass gobbledy goop, what could I make out? Well, I was not entirely sure as to the where, but it hardly looked foreign as the layout and architecture looked a lot like the Oransen, Illinois I lived in. Hell, judging by the dipping sun either a few minutes or a few days had passed since I was knocked out.
But that’s just the visual stuff, which was already a massive red flag, yet things got even odder as I could actually feel myself running through the street. Now, I was pretty thin, mostly due to genes I suppose, but I was never very athletic, as one could predict by how rare it is for me to go outside. So going by what had to be an inhumanly fast speed of, I dunno, at least 40 kilometers was more than a little foreign to me. That’s before I felt the wind going through my far thicker and more plentiful head of hair, which went from being pretty short to dropping down to my shoulders. I heard the gusts of wind brushing past my ears as they seemingly picked up more detail than I had ever been able to before, capturing the sounds of squirrels and birds I passed on by.
All of this would actually be pretty amazing if not for two things, the fact I had no clue what the hell was going on, and the fact I could not control myself as I felt my legs dash through the street. I don’t think I could be blamed for trying to speak, or rather trying to yell for help as I was simply frightened by how I could not control my own body. Yet, that term is one that I would soon learn to be improper as I was interrupted by a young woman’s upbeat, mildly sarcastic, and distinctly accented voice. “Was wonderin’ when yer keester was gonna get outta that there hay.” She said to me, but even before I could formulate the question of where, let alone who this woman was, I noticed that the source of her voice appeared to be from my own lips.
This naturally lessened my composure, as I doubt anybody would be able to handle this situation rationally, but thankfully my disjointed unspoken thoughts of fear and panicked seemed to get through to this woman as her pace gracefully decreased to a normal and believable run, to a jog, and finally to a simple but far from slow walk, to sloughing next to roadside tree. And believe me when I say it felt very bizarre to not only experience that much of a decrease in velocity, but have absolutely no control of it, just the feeling as if I did. “Sorry ‘bout that kid, didn’t really expect anythin’ like this to happen. To keep things short an’ sweet as sugar, the name’s Urabe, an’ I guess you’ll be sharin’ my body fer a while.” Following the uncanny sensation of… everything about this blasted situation, my obscured vision was forced downwards to display an off-white three quarter sleeve blouse with a cobalt sweater vest, a black knee length skirt, and some big brown boots all covering a not particularly curvy, but distinctly female body. Oh, and some black hair fell in order to obscure my vision, as if the B-cup breasts and far darker skin tone didn’t make the difference in body evident enough.
“The fuck did you do to me?” Roared through my mind as I had a load of questions for this Urabe, with her having the foresight to tell me to, “Take yer horses an’ stable ‘em, ‘cos a ruckus ain’t gonna up an’ solve anythin’.” I was about to protest the idea, which would have been idiotic on my part, but Urabe thankfully stopped me before I could try to talk back. “I’ll start by offerin’ you my sincerest apologies, sure weren’t my intention fer ya to serve as a co-pilot durin’ my job tonight, but I suppose we’ll need to make due. ‘Sides, fixin’ you’d take time I quite frankly don’t have right now.” I quivered as I felt her lips move from a first person perspective, with her subtle gestures as she moved her hands around only dripping more and more dread into the back of my mind when her words implied just the opposite was happening as I was the one who didn’t have any control in this situation.
“Now, what I’m gonna be spewin’ might sound like genuine horse manure, but trust me when I say that you ain’t in no position to question reality right now.” Urabe said as I was letting the… sensations that went along with her body really kick in. From the simple gestures she made as she resumed walking to her destination, the motion of her lips cooing out her accented words, and the bobbing for her… looser assets. Mentally making notes on the differences in the manner in which cloth felt on another’s body, and feeling like I was speaking in her thick drawl. “Let’s just say that I’mma some sorta secret agent who travels around the universe an’ fixes things that need fixin’? You follow me, bud?” I tried to slowly nod, forgetting I could not move in any way, but Urabe seemed to understand my gesture. “Good. I’m actually a machine as my funky vision ought to have shown ya, an’ I’ve been doin’ some pretty dirty work fer a while. Whether it be between multiple light years or thousands of years backwards an’ forward in time, I’ve been around fer what’d amount in yer time as… 3,257 years an’ 37 days. Just about all of those days have been spent workin’ fer my master, goes by the name of Vincent Dawn if you must know. Real ass if I do say myself.”
I had regained my mental composure in the time she ranted off against her employer, so I asked the natural question you’d bring up to anybody bitching about their job. “So, why are you working for this Vincent Dawn?” “It’s a story I ain’t happy ‘bout, but let’s just say Vincent Dawn ‘snot very forgivin’ or offers up much in value to those VIncent Dawn finds. And I’m sure ya coulda told, I can’t give him so much as ah pronoun, cocky bastard don’t like that too much and messed wit mah translator. Urabe commented as she began walking once more, pulling her arms behind her head as she scowled at a dog who was barking at her from across the street and behind a wooden fence. “I think your translator might be a bit broken… Urabe.” I said awkwardly before feeling as if I insulted her. “Well no shit, unless yer some kinda nitwit. Happens all the time wit new languages like this… English I’m tryin’ to deal wit.”
There was a brief pause that came after she spoke, during which I rapidly thought up and eventually spouted off a couple questions. “So… are you originally an android? Are you part of a larger machine that is responsible for, I dunno, intergalactic shenanigans? What exactly happened to my body? If your English translator is glitched, could you speak to me in Japanese? Hell, where and when am I even?” Urabe then stopped, sighed, and returned to walking to her destination, which I did not ask about, but was planning to. “I come from a planet wit a dominant Carbon based bipedal species, an’ I was crafted in their image, as one would expect. But I cert-ly did not have the same features you see where you once saw yourself. Only person I gots ta answer to’s Vincent Dawn, an’ if I did have any sibling units, I would get to take a break longer than three seconds between each mission.”
“As fer yer carcass, the short of it is that I needed matter, stuff in this world to be reconfigured to better suit my form. The form varies from world to world, an’ whatever program Vincent Dawn placed into me went an’ decided my current attire was the most ‘propriate. Downside in this case was that you just so happened to be some of the matter I absorbed, a fluke I ain’t takin’ the blame fer, but I’ll just say that by the time this is over you’ll be just dandy. So don’t worry yourself in mah pretty li’l head” Urabe explained, sounding very apathetic as she droned out her answers as if she were reading a script she loathed. “an’ just ‘cos I learned English don’t mean I like fillin’ my noggin wit every blasted language yerplanet has. So take that Japanese an’ shove it… Also it’s 18:47, ‘bout three miles away from where I entered this world.”
Almost immediately before I could ask another question, namely what she was doing here, she preemptively dashed to wherever she was rushing to before I regained consciousness. I tried asking her to stop, but instead she told me she was running late and could explain when she got “there”. “There” was a building I think I may have seen when I was searching for a comic book shop to look for some DVDs and figures when I was ten. It was a bad neighborhood no question, and the the exact location was likely among its worse. A really run down and shitty looking motel that was practically falling apart, had bullet holes, blood stains on the exterior, and looked like it was the home to prostitution, gangs, or drug related activities. Possibly all three.. If I did not have confidence that a robot could beat a drug dealer with no problem, I would have been screeching for her to get the hell out instead of merely growing startled when Urabe calmly made her way to a random room.
Actually, the whole disconnection between my thoughts or desired actions and my movement felt incredibly bizarre. Almost like I was under some kind of spell or had strings manipulating my limbs after being injected with god knows what, causing me to go limb and only serve as an extension for somebody else. Well, if that happened after being shifted into a body of the opposite sex… even if it is apparently a robot, but from what I had seen of the exterior and felt from first hand experience, it was something difficult to tell. I mean, I could feel a heartbeat.
Where was I? Right, the room. She began by peeking in through a little hole in the door that I assume was once filled with glass, but had apparently been either gutted or fallen out. She closed one eye and zoomed in her vision. Aside from a very run down appearance that fit with the low standards of the exterior of the place, I practically jumped what I saw who was in the room. Not that I knew them or anything, but… I’ll be honest and say that I’ve never actually seen two people having sex as I found the image discomforting, and I was forced to look at two men having sex with the same woman.
Yes, I am seventeen and I had never seen any real physical sex in my life, let alone have it. No traditional porn, with the closest thing being a Hentai some guy paid me to sub, which was an utterly dreadful experience for me. So forgive me if I make any mistakes as I paint the scene. There were three people on one queen sized bed without even a mattress pad on it, two men going down on the same woman. One large, jolly, and Hispanic man who looked to be in his early twenties having anal sex with her. The other being a nervous Asian teenager who was likely losing his virginity in this woman’s mouth. I did not get a very good look at the woman due to how she was squished between the two gross images of these naked hairy men making the most vulgar and discomforting faces I’d ever seen. I really did wish that I could shut my eyes as I saw this vileness before me, but no, Urabe had to keep focusing on them despite my gagging and requests for her to stop.
“So, I take it ya ain’t one of them teens who norm-ly mastah-bates to this kinda shit? So what do ya like to wiggle yer penis at when it gets erect? You gay, got a wackadoo fetish or somethin’?” Urabe whispered at me after getting her eye away from the hole and sparing me any more of that scene. “I… Really do not like nudity, okay? And how the hell do you know about fetishes?” I responded, trying to avoid divulging any personal information to somebody who could and was probably reading my thoughts at the time. “Pff, you think Imma just gonna go ‘round every goldarn planet wit no research? Trust me Terry, I’m doin’ research as we speak, an’ man does this kinda shit seem popular on yer inta-net. But I’d hardly say y’all are the most obsessed wit yer sex, even if I don’t get any of this diaper shit I’m siftin’ thru.”
Saying I was uncomfortable at any point in this chapter so far would be beyond acceptable, but I was thankfully given a break as the two men appeared to finish their intercourse with the woman as Urabe was whispering to me, with the redressing of themselves being a rapid process as they looked both pleased and incredibly embarrassed by what they did, the younger one more so than the older one. Urabe quickly moved her eye out of the socket and jumped up into the underside of the motel’s awning, somehow holding her position as she waited for the two men to leave the room, which only took a matter of seconds. This left Urabe and I right in front of the unlocked door, which she opened for us to see who the third partner was. Saying anything remotely positive would be untrue, as the woman before use looked like she was on the verge of death, her body both sweaty and malnourished, her hair looked like hay, eyes were pale much like her clammy skin, and her assets were the type of thing that looked good, but only when they were in the dark, or I suppose a dimly lit motel room that did not have an open door shining rays of light into it. As for the worst detail, this woman was placing two fingers inside of her lower regions when Urabe walked in. I was disgusted on several levels, and was regrettably forced to observe what events would transpire involving this corpse-like street walker.
First thing Urabe did after slamming the door shut behind her was probably the most alienating feeling I’ve ever physically experienced. I could go into detail about the sensory readjustment I felt or the sensation of nerves being altered and loose sensations sending a numbing hum to my mind, but it boils down to how the sensation of a left hand morphing into a metal claw is very strange. I could still feel the nerves as the circular clamp based appendage opened up and latched around to the neck of the disgusting woman I had no choice but to look at. An action Urabe executed with no hesitation and inspired the utmost level of shock in her target as she wasn’t even able to stop masturbating before being pressed up against the wall.
Almost immediately after the brief period of shock, however, the woman then started giggling, then chuckling, and continuing into a full uproar. “Ah fuck!” said the woman in a very grimey voice that sounded both strained and dehydrated. “Ya got me, didn’t you, ya bitch? Yes, yes, I suppose I should have been more careful, probably put a pay wall on my fucking services and maybe hire a bodyguard to give me a few seconds to escape. Maybe I also should have picked a place with more than one cunt gargling exit. But no sir, no, you cannot be fucked at this moment, sir. I had to be too consumed with the pleasure, the sensations this sexy ass bod can send through my mind. So, fuck it, I had a good run, just don’t expect me to talk. I was getting into the kinky shit anyhow so I’ll probably cum to your torture.”
Urabe promptly spat in the disgusting woman’s face, particularly her eye. “Hey Terry,” Urabe said as her grip only grew tighter on the woman. “If I hadta take myself a guess, I’d say you’d thought I was sent on a bounty job, maybe get a couple humans who were messin’ wit some clients close to Vincent Dawn.” Well, the thought did come into my mind, but I would have not placed it in my top five guesses. At this point the woman was just confused as she was gasping for air while trying to blurt out obscenities at Urabe. “Well, that’s part true, ‘cept I ain’t after any humans I just want some Scumbag that’s inside their body, or in this dame’s case, I’d say corpse.” Her claw then loosened up as the woman began to speak with an even more hoarse voice. “I was just doing my job, fuck as many of these humans as I could, found a real nice body with some great sensations if I do say so myself. But you can’t let us take this insignificant shithole, can’t you? If I’m a parasite, then what the fuck does that make you?” “Me?” Urabe asked with a grin. “Pfft, I reckon the everyone’d say Imma hero.”
With that, Urabe’s right hand morphed into a syringe that went right into the woman’s arm. I had no idea what it was and could not think of any way to respond to the world around me. I was simply baffled by the past minute, if that. Before I could find any words to say to Urabe, or form any questions in my disjointed mind, the woman’s hacking ceased and Urabe let her free as she fell onto the bed, her body not moving in the slightest, and a grin appearing on Urabe’s face. “Sorry ‘bout that Terry, guess I should’ve added that bit in my little ol’ recap, but I’m hardly use to talkin’ to anybody outta the loop I occupate.”
Urabe then converted her hands back into regular looking humanoid appendages began to remove her victim from the squeaky mattress and into a stained bathtub before, well… disposing of it. What happened was that she deactivated her, or I guess my hearing so all I could hear was her voice. Then she morphed her hands once more into very sharp objects, tilted her head 180 degrees, and began chopping the corpse up into pieces. I suppose she was being generous not showing me her dismemberment of a corpse, but I was utterly disgusted with her regardless. To the point where I feel extremely justified in asking her, very simply, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Urabe replied with a chuckle and grin while maintaining her cutting of bone and flesh. “Terry, I do realize that we’re gonna need ta spend quite a bit of time together, so be sure to pay attention as I take care of this here bod. You see, there are these Scumbags, go all ‘round the universe an’ try to get themselves some better forms fer themselves. Problem is that in order to do that they gotta send an entire species down under, an’ these seven twits decided that humans were the best target. ‘Cept Vincent Dawn likes themselves the humans fer one reason or another an’ who do you guess needs to kill these dicks? Me. Now this whore up an’ thought she would be smart by spreadin’ herself through others via sexual intercourse, infectin’ others wit her actin’ as a hivemind. Well she can’t get nothin’ done now that she’s pulp, now can she?”
As Urabe was explaining this, I could feel the sensation of flesh ripping and tearing, my appendages ripping through bones, and the sensation of, well, murder be something ingrained in my mind. I wanted to go home so badly at this point, I wanted to bash my head against the wall in hopes everybody would freak the fuck out again and I would be sent to a nice place where I would get what I wanted. But no. I was a prisoner in the mind of another person, a person who only saw fit to offer me the inability to see her rip up a human being to a mushy liquid, but still feel it.
“Yo, Terry, y’aight?” Urabe asked after she morphed her hands back to normal, finished her dirty work, and began to fill up the bathtub to better displace the mush she made. “No.” I replied, trying to communicate my disapproval as best as I could. “I want to go away.” I said as I would normally have tears going down my face at this point. “You’re a monster and I… feel your every action. I… want out. Please.” Urabe then took a big sigh, rolled her eyes and lowered her voice. “Look, Terry… I’m sorry if I… messed all this shit up. Problem’s that I’ve been solo fer centuries. I was, what’s that word, inconsid-rate of yer feels.” “Can I just… go into some kind of sleep mode until you finish doing what you’re doing. Hell, can you just erase my goldarn memory because… I don’t want this in my head.”
“Lookie here, Terry, I just got a word from Vincent Dawn, said that I could take my time from now on, go an’ play it fun wit these executions. I can’t really mess wit yer mem-ries, but I can try an’ make these things easier on yer side, kay?” I felt slightly better, but going from terrible to crappy is not much of an improvement. “Yeah, whatever you can do, Urabe.” “Well, prolly should get that techno-shit off yer face.” She said before doing just that, removing the foreign UI from her vision, giving me a crisp and clean view of the world, which are two words I certainly would not use to describe the busted tile and groady mirror that occupied most of my vision.
“Hey, you should see the face I’ve got, an’ I suppose you’ll be seein’ the world from fer some time now.” Urabe said as she noticed the mirror I,- sorry, we were staring at, and ceased her act of corpse destroying to show me a fairly clear look at Urabe’s face. This felt really, really weird to me, as I found Urabe’s face to be very cute. With black hair that puffed around her head, not going past her shoulders, bright cyan eyes that shined an almost unnaturally intensity , and overall petite facial features despite how this girl was a murderer
Thankfully, Urabe ruined whatever weird sensation was running through my mind by saying, “Yep, I look just like one of yer Japanese anime girls, ain’t that just the most sugoi kawaii desu thing you’ve ever done seen?” At first I was concerned that she was trying to fuck with me, but the sigh following our collective silence and slow walk out of the motel room implied it was a failure if that were the case. It was made even more silent as she only reactivated my ability to hear anything but her and my voice until she walked out the door. “Hey, look, I know yer not in the best mood right now, so how ‘bout we go an’ get some ice cream, kay?” This only proceeded to make Urabe look more socially stupid, as if she believed something as dimwitted as ‘ice cream increases one’s happiness’.
“You know, there’s an anime that reminds me of this, the terrible feelings, extensive gore, and just downright meanness to it. Well, make that two. Master of Martial Hearts and Blood-C. They’re both among the most wretched and vile things I’ve ever watched due to their disconcert for human life and narrative value, and I thought it would be the worst thing I ever saw. You made that seem tame in comparison, so sure, let’s get the closest parallel to the bliss that is Squid Girl that we can get in reality and pick up some fucking ice cream!” I said, trying to sound collected in my frustrations, but really stuttering and fumbling to get anything out.
“So… What flavor do ya want?” Urabe asked me as if she wasn’t paying attention. “I was lactose intolerant, and since you’re a robot why do you care?” Urabe replied by moving some spit around her mouth, having it gush through her gums before she spat it out. “Didja taste that? I mean, this ain’t a surprise if you can feel, smell, hear, see, and, get this, taste. Gimme at least an ounce of credit.” I then mumbled an apology for what I said, as I thought it was a bit rash in retrospect, yer her unaffected grin made that endeavor come across as futile, lessening my fondness for her even more as she was not listening to what I was saying.
Silence naturally followed as I began to take in the sounds of the summer breeze, a distinct noise I noted before, but I had always found the sound of wind to be relaxing despite being something of a hermit. I’m just thankful that I was not hearing the sounds of cicadas bombarding my ears, as it is one of my least favorite tropes in anime, and I certainly dislike hearing it in reality as well. Honestly, what is gained by having an audio track looping in the background. Yes, it may set the setting, but you have so many other ways in which that is accomplished that the only justification I can give for the trope’s existence being how it has been around so long it would sound weird for it to be absent. I’d argue by saying we often see characters changing their clothes when Cicadas show up, making their wailing useless.
On the subject of clothes, I noted before how the different sensations began to hit me during the… god, fifteen or twenty minutes I’ve shared this body with Urabe, and the feeling of her fabric gracefully brush along her skin was something I began to fixate on. Much like how I noted the manner in which the wind brushed and bobbed her hair around, or the feeling of a skirt that flapped in the wind. It actually felt pretty nice and I almost began to place myself out of my terrible situation and into one where I felt like I was nearing the end of a particularly bad dream, but no, Urabe just had to open her mouth once more. “I take it ya like whatcha feel?” I then paused and began to ask what I felt was a very valid question. “So, um, how does gender or anything like that work for you? I mean, I don’t want to be too intrusive, but-” Urabe thankfully began to answer as I was struggling to get my question out.
“That bi-gender thing’s somethin’ I see all the time. Wasn’t made as either or, but I was assembled by some fuckwit who was basicly a male. Real ass if I do say myself, an’ I actually modded my form before Vincent Dawn stole me to work fer him. Also, I figure you should do yer share of yappin’, seein’ as how we’re gonna need to be walkin’ a helluva lot fer a while.” If my brief profile weren’t enough of an indication, I am not the best at telling people who I am and discussing my history, but I was backed in a corner with this girl, and she could easily have been messing with me and have been reading my brain this whole time. So I took a moment to assemble my thoughts and then let my story out.
EVENT 3: RACKIN’ UP THEM MURDER DEATH KILLZ!
“Let’s start with my mother, Juniper Honyaku, first.” I said as I prepared to tell Urabe the whole story, leaving no important detail untold. “She was born into a very wealthy family, not entirely sure what they did or where their fortune came from, but seeing as how she was thirteen when they… passed away in a car crash, she doesn’t like to talk about them that much. Or her silence could be attributed to her life after her parents died. You see, she was sent to live with her uncle. He was actually the widower of Juniper’s mother’s sister, so the connection was already pretty slim, but guess what, the sister died in the same accident and she didn’t have any living grandparents so he was the only family she had left. This already sounds bad, but whenever my mom says this story, she always emphasize the cruelty and monstrous behavior of her uncle, often time just referring to him as a beast, boar, animal, or a hairless ape. She never said what exactly he did, but at age fourteen, she gave birth to her first and only child, Terrance Honyaku. I trust you can fill in the blanks”
Urabe was stoic with her quest for ice cream as I recounted my tragic backstory, but I figured that she was a machine and could simply deactivate any emotional response or something of the sort. “But her uncle wasn’t alive by the time I was born, as she ended up killing him. All I know is that it involved a kitchen knife, happened exactly three months before I was born, and had a pretty messy legal proceeding that left my mother with millions and millions of dollars through a wide variety of accounts. To make things weirder, she was now viewed as an adult through one legal loophole or another. Being a wild mess of angst, hormones, and just rage towards having about a year of her life stolen from her and having a kid as early as she did, my mother was just a wreck as she plowed through her teenage years. Not caring about getting anything beyond a high school education. Only ever going to colleges to party and make the most of her vast fortune. That is until my nannies realized I didn’t recognize her at the age of six, and she decided to cool down and try to live her life as an adult. Start going to a part time job, be safer with her money, and actually take care of me while growing up. But, that’s only the first half of the story.”
“Terry, I sure as hell ain’t gonna stop yer tale, but I gotta know if you’re cool wit this Electric Blue ice cream.” Urabe whispered as she had entered the ice cream shop and pulled a twenty dollar bill from her wrist. Where did she get these wonderful toys? “Huh? Sure, sure. Whatever you want, you’re only on Earth… however many times you’ve been on it.” I said as I began properly wording the story in my head. Urabe actually then proceeded to combining french vanilla, some mint chocolate chip, and the aforementioned Electric Blue with gummy worm chunks on top. It was among the most intense thing I have ever tasted, but I tried to ignore it and continue with my story as she behaved far more normal than I would have in an ice cream shop, or any shop for that matter.
“So, where do I come in?” I said, trying to sound 80% cooler than I normally do, and failing by a margin just as large. “Well, I was given a lot of care and attention as a child and was homeschooled for a while as my mom decided to, you know, be a mom. However my nanny, Miss Flare, was fluent in Japanese. So while she was raising me, she was teaching me Japanese to boot. It’s how her son Max and I talked to each other, not that Max couldn’t speak English or anything, but it was our secret speech in front of other kids when Miss Flare sent us to the park. But eventually Max had to go away to normal school more and more, and Miss Flare was getting too busy with something else she could do. So I was left with a full middle school education by age eleven while being pretty much bilingual. Not that I mean to brag or anything like that, it’s just… it’s just what happened.”
The reason I stuttered near the end was that Urabe was just downing her ice cream at this point. I mean, if she could get headaches from the cold food being shoved down her throat and freezing up her brain, she would have gotten a really bad one. Yet she didn’t and instead was munching through the waffle cone before I could even finish my story. “What fer the next couple years, ya got any stuff that happened next?” Urabe asked as she munched the last of her treat. “Well, I was sent to the local high school, alone, and three years younger than anybody else there. In AP classes and honors exclusively. …I ended up getting in a fight in my first week, some guy in the locker room who was trying to… look at my privates. It was something about searching for my pubic hair and, well, they were very rough with me, and were harassing me after we were sent in to change. I… lost it and went after this punk-ass kid, name was Yullock KIkansky or something like that. I bit into his privates, as he was just wearing boxers and… I went feral on him. I’m ashamed of it, but yes, I began to claw at his skin and bite into him while his peers were awestruck by my actions, too frightened to do anything. It wasn’t cool by any level. I was just sobbing profusely as I had built up so much rage towards these older children and… I was expelled within an hour, and Yullock wasn’t in school for two weeks. He arrived pretty beat up from what I hear too.”
“So, whatcha do then? Be one of those N-E-E-Ts?” Urabe was referring to a NEET, or N.E.E.T. if you like putting a period after every character. It refers to one who is not employed, being educated, or in training for a job. It is often applied to, and I hate this term, Otaku culture, where the person is content living off of convenience store food and going through the trifecta of manga, anime, and video games. I am different because I translate those three things and more, getting paid for my work by a variety of companies… That sounded a lot better in my head. “No, I’m not a NEET, I am employed so I do not apply.” I answered very confidently, even though Urabe was unimpressed with my rather proudly made statement, instead she lowered her eyebrows in disapproval.
“Yeah, you’re one of them translators. I swear, yer planet’s got a crazy number of languages an’ these dialect things. Surprised you people are still needed an’ this place didn’t just get themselves a new language for all the humans to use.” Urabe remarked, likely failing to see the amount of conflict that would arise with such a plan, let alone the amount of money that would go into the project and sudden uselessness of many translators, such as myself. “‘Sides, wouldn’t ya need a degree or somethin’ if you wanna be a profess-nal?” Urabe asked, clearly noticing how I would not have even a high school diploma if my story ended there. “I pretty much taught myself for a few years, getting a tutor here and there, and got my high school GED by the time in my life when most people graduate from middle school. Never did go to any college to get a formal degree, but experience is far more valuable and I have that to fault around due to the extensive work I have been doing for nearly five years. Besides, I really don’t want to go to a college.”
“Why’s that?” Urabe asked very bluntly. “Well, if my little high school story didn’t tip you off, I did not get along with a lot of people, and to this date I only have ever had two real friends, one of which I was out of touch with years ago, the other I don’t even know the gender of. So any social aspect, or even the sensation of being around a lot of people, is kinda unsettling to me. Don’t even get me started on my attempts at going to a convention. On paper it sounded wonderful, but I was utterly miserable in the end. Had to have my mother bring me home before the end of the first day.” I said, regretting my words as they came out of my metaphorical mouth.
“Since you’ve been spewin’ out this background, I figure that I oughta join in too.” Urabe said as she placed her hands behind her head as she continued walking towards the setting sun. “I was created by this real jackass of a man, wanted to do little but cause a buncha shit to the world fer reasons I never really figured out. He really wanted to overthrow this government an’ take over the, relatively, small rock he lived on. ‘Cept there was this humanoid machine, I guess android is the best translation I can muster. Was referred to only as Seita. Seita thrashed any machine this jackass could create, that is until he finally made me, the first bot worth a damn and who could put up a fight against this Seita. Norm’ly everything’d be hunky dory then, but I was born real pissy towards just about everything due to this or that error an’ decided to not only kill my creator in blind rage, but take care of just about everything else on the rock I was built on, includin’ just that. So there I was, lost in space with nothing but rage burning inside me, when Vincent Dawn chose to pick me up, fix me so I could truly think, an’ gave me a choice. Either do his bidding or go through hell. I chose the latter an’ I still get meself some mighty fine willies just by thinkin’ ‘bout the things I saw. Not that it got my aggression out fer the years upon years I was doing nothin’ but fightin’ an’ feelin’ pain. As it still makes me grin to rack up them MDKs. As a matter of fact, I think I’m just about to rack up one more.”
Urabe then paused to look up at what I believed to be her destination. She had left whatever bad side of town she ventured to and reached a fairly nice looking condominium. What she was planning to do here made my hypothetical stomach turn as I was still feeling as if I would be haunted by the sensation of flesh being chopped up into pieces with scissor-like fingers. But I knew that I could not even hope to stop her from committing another odd flavor of murder as I was currently powerless when it came to doing anything physical. She proceeded into the building, and stated to me that she needed to get to the eighth floor, which she seemingly wanted to take an “elly-vat-tore” to.
She promptly found and headed to the box of vertical movement, except there was only one elevator and it was being held open by a small scrawny teenage Hispanic male. He was less than five and a half feet tall, had scruffy looking facial hair piercing through his upper lip, and was wearing a uniform, although I hadn’t the slightest clue where it was from. It was only a baseball cap and collared shirt, both of which were red and had a poorly made looking logo that read “Doodlers”. Yet all questions were seemingly answered as I saw him holding two pizza boxes in the hand that was not allowing Urabe to hitch a ride up to her destination. In fact, upon entering it turned out that he had the same floor destination. Urabe then, immediately starting small talk, asked this man what room he was going to after the elevator door closed.
I would describe what he was saying, but I could barely understand his extraordinarily thick accent. Urabe did seem to get this gist of what he was saying, however, to which she promptly slammed the emergency stop button and punched the man in the face. Before I could even ask Urabe what in god’s name she was thinking, she began to strip the man of his shirt and cap, place them on herself and pick up the pizzas before allowing the elevator to continue its ascension. All of which took literally three seconds. I suppose her speed should not be considered all that remarkable considering what she demonstrated when we first met, but I was convinced she was just messing with me if she could access all of these powers without any clear restrictions.
That aside, I did eventually ask Urabe, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She responded very promptly. “Let’s just say that I wanna make it through this whole shebang without makin’ any basic murders? This job gets dull an’ I saw a point where I could get a little bit more of that spark. ‘Sides, didn’t like the look of that guy an’ I kinda like Punchin’ people. Or are ya just pissy that I din’t take off my shirt when I put this one on?” It was the last sentence that got to me, as I was stammering for a proper response as the elevator pinged to its destination, floor eight. It was barely able to take note of any details about the hallway before Urabe quickly made her way to room 805, which she knocked the door of. No response, so she hit the doorbell. Nothing again. Urabe then decided to take her pizza free hand and convert her index finger into a key… because she could apparently do that. I guess the syringe and claws should have made that surprising, but it still seemed infinitely more subtle than her motel run, making me wonder if she won’t butcher this next ‘Scumbag’.
As she carefully opened up the door, Urabe’s eyes widened as an incredibly foul odor burst open from the room. It was a mix match of every bodily fluid to come beneath the belt, old meat, cheese, and some truly wretched bodily funk. Visually, it certainly painted that picture as it looked like a mix between a stock photo of a hikikomori and a straight up garbage dump. It was easily the most vile disgusting place I have ever seen in person, and around here where Urabe seemingly said ‘fuck it’ to the tactical espionage action and shouted, “Woo-wee, the fuck did ya do in here Scumbag? Store bodies cover them in yer own shit?” There was a response in the apartment that was something in between a groan and a moan coming from a mouth that sounded as if it was full of something.
After turning off her sense of smell, likely for the both of us, Urabe quickly made her way through the cesspit that was this condo and eventually found a reclining chair with a truly horrific looking man. Weighing at least four hundred pounds, with his fat not only oozing out of his stained and sweat drenched formerly white tank top, but his arms were so thick and gooey I doubted he could lift them above his head. The pudgy dough-like and dark skinned creature was completely bald and was currently in the process of stuffing his face with some processed cheese coated chocolate crap that I’d never ever touch, while sitting in a darkened room only illuminated by a television, which had nothing on it. I never did figure out why, but the fact I could not see the remote makes me think that this man just settled on having a white screen rather than go hunting for a device originally called the Lazy Bone. Although, this man could have easily not had any bones and just be supported by a thick layer of blubber… sorry, I just really do hate obese people. Overweight is fine, but this was something I wanted to vomit in the face of, except for how he’d probably eat it.
“Yo, Scumbag!” Urabe said, moving right in front of the lump of fat she apparently came here for. “So, I just finished rackin’ meself up an MDK on a slut who tried fuckin’ to take over the world via some space STD. The hell are you doin’?” The fat man only moved to flip the bird at Urabe, and tell her to fuck off in a voice that made my stomach… made me feel uneasy. “Really? No fight or nothin’? Pfft, guess I should keep my expectations low, like I’m sure the fucker who sent you set. I mean, really, you just gonna sit there an’ let me get the lamest MDK of my career? At least sit up, ya shithead!” The “Scumbag” then proceeded to try to move itself, fart, and then give up, having moved an inch in total. Yet the inch did make its tiny penis become visible, and it was covered in a gooey brown liquid… must I say what I believe it was?
“Terry, do ya think I should even off this guy, or should I just leave him to be his own do-er in?” Urabe asked me as I was genuinely confused if she intended for me to be involved in this kerfuffle. I quickly began stammering and dodging the question as best I could, verging on letting the man live, but she eventually shouted, “Boring!” and brought out her syringe once more, inserting it into the man’s neck, sending him down a very rapid death where he let out a gasp after putting up zero resistance, and losing control of his bowels as I could see a trail of urine shoot out from his penis. Saying I was disgusted would be an understatement, as I would have indeed been vomitting if I were in this vile room. Urabe though? She was as bored if anything as she soullessly muttered, “Two down, five ta go.” Right before rolling her eyes and releasing a sigh.
As she made her way out of the open door to murder scene and reactivated her sense of smell, I was hardly in the mood to ta- erm, converse with her. After walking to the elevator, which hadn’t moved, she began shoving the Mexican kid out of it, placing him up against on the wall and throwing his uniform at him along with the untouched boxed pizzas. She did not, however, take the same way down as she did up, instead choosing the stairs for a reason I could not fathom. I took this to mean she did want to talk as, well, robots don’t need exercise. “So, what exactly are these things?” I asked, not recalling her explicitly explaining her purpose aside from being a secret agent. “Figured you’d catch yourself by now, but I can’t suppose you’re worth the blame. Gist of it is that these be some parasitic pieces of shit, but I’ll go into more detail. They’ve got this long an’ overly complicated name, but in yer language, callin’ them Scumbags seems to stick just like they do to the interior of people’s bodies. Often entering through an open orpheus, they crawl their way to the brain, injectin’ themselves to what makes a human, or just ‘bout any species, tick. They then try to spread themselves either through consumption of the host, or in the slut’s case, fuck their DNA into others. The sloth on the other hand was one who up an’ lost his way. You see, these Scumbags are pretty shit for the most part, really dumb an’ easy to manipulate little buggers who need to obey the body in order for them to live. ‘Cept they ain’t got shit for brains so most of them end up dying out. I’d compare the numbers to these Sea Turtles I stumbled upon a while back. Oh, an’ I gotta say, you’re world has far more easy to access information that I assumed. Good on yer kind fer that, Terry.”
By the time she had finished, she was out of the condo, looking high at a lovely shade of sunset induced pink filling both the sky and the indigo clouds around it. It was a sight I quite often saw from my window during the summer, and I guess Urabe could appreciate it as well. Or maybe she was just looking around for her next target. Here’s where I expected her to start dashing or maybe even steal the very clearly labeled pizza delivery car. Instead she was either very lucky or accessed the online bus schedule as one was dropping somebody off less than ten meters away from her. She let out a shrug, pulled the exact change she needed out of her hands, two dollar bills and a quarter, and promptly got on a fairly empty bus, mumbling that she “wanted to take the more colorful route”. I naturally could not object as she sat down at what was likely a disgusting seat and placed her arms behind her head.
EVENT 4: SUMBITCH WAS ASKIN’ FER IT!
“I say, I say good sir it is time for the mental test, can ya hear me clean as a whistle, Terry?” Urabe shouted almost immediately after she got comfortable in the gross bus seat… well, I could feel it, so I suppose that we would be comfortable- point is, she said that without moving her lips, implying she was mentally communicating with me, and me alone. I suppose this should have been deemed possible in my mind quite some time ago as, well, she’s a space robot. But no, instead I got jumpy as she began to communicate with sealed lips, remaining static aside from her constantly darting eyes. Maybe it was just something she did to get data, or maybe she just liked looking at this world, even though I’m sure there are far prettier ones out in the great beyond.
Her newfound ability did, however, act as a spark for discussion, which I had been avoiding for a solid five minutes at that point. “So… Urabe. Do you enjoy killing?” I probably could have worded that better, scratch that, I flat out should have worded that better as I could feel Urabe’s face contorting as she began mentally telling me her response. “Lookie here, Terry. I have been gettin’ bloody hands fer ‘bout as long as yer recorded history. Ya think I would hate or love anythin’ after that long?” I expected her to stop there, but she kept her complain train rolling. “I up an’ murdered a good trillion sentients in my time, so doin’ this BS wit the Scumbags don’t even get my senses thrilled. Hell, only reason why I don’t rule this universe by now is how few shits I give, along wit the ever so ‘divine’ Vincent Dawn.”
“So, I take that as a no?” I asked, sounding like an idiot. “I just toldja, so why don’t ya listen? If it were up to me I’d just settle on a little planet a couple… centuries more advanced than this Earth an’ go through the rest of my life before movin’ to another world. Never botherin’ nobody an’ rackin’ up one more MDK. But life’s a game where you play the cards ya got, an’ my hand ‘snot worth shit. Or if ya got less brains than I presumed, ya bet yer ass it’s a no.” I was very rarely scolded in life, so I was taking her words very hardly. It’s the kind of thing that would leave me quiet before I went into a corner and rolled up into a ball. But I was trapped in this robo-mind, so I only did the former of those three.
I merely watched the unfamiliar scenery pass on by before Urabe finally decided to pull the rope to bring the bus to a stop. Where was she getting off? I had absolutely no idea. It looked as if she was tracing her steps unless Oransen had more than one bad side to it. With plenty of scummy looking young men and young women walking and driving through what looked like a place that had not changed from how it looked in 1988, except it had dilapidated over the past 27 years. Rust was on just about every metal object, roads beat up and filled with bumps, trash gunked up just about everywhere, and a general sense of griminess I had never personally seen, let alone walked through. I was now, albeit while in the back of Urabe’s mind, as she was making her way to one building in particular, not letting it out of her field of vision, at least before somebody demanded her attention.
The individual was a chubby white kid who looked as if he had absolutely no personality to call his own and was attempting to compensate for that with his clothing. I did not recognize the logo on his side tilted baseball cap, but he was already looking like a nitwit for even wearing such a thing as it kept his dirty blonde curly locks underwraps. I was familiar with what looked to be an extremely outdated sweatshirt that read ‘YOLO’, as was I with his large raver pants that seemed too large for him, but I suppose that was intentional as it was the hip thing to do in his mind. Point is that this dumb looking young man decided to speak to Urabe, saying “Ey girl, wassup? I haven’t see you around these parts. You oughta be careful, maybe you’ll need an escort-” It was around this point where this fool began reaching his hand further down Urabe as if he was going to cup a feel… which was a terrible idea in general, but Urabe was clearly not having any of that. She proceeded to very quickly and viciously grab this youth’s arm, and yank it off as if he was made of paper. What followed was an expected, but still gruesome burst of blood and what would have been a shriek of terror, if not for how Urabe then shoved the boy’s disconnected fist into his mouth before punching him in the jaw hard enough to break a few teeth. That was not enough for this monster I was forced to follow, as she then grabbed the man and proceeded to throw him into a nearby dumpster… I was really hoping this was a dream, but it wasn’t.
Urabe spat at the broken man before leaving. “What a fuckin’ ass.” She said, going back to using her lips. “I just went in an’ did some researchin’ when it came to yer kind an’ their sexism. Gotta say its a hell of a lot shittier when ya experience it first hand. No worries Terry, I made sure that he ‘snot dead, but he’ll be in a bed fer a few weeks.” I didn’t say anything in response, mostly because I was very, very nervous just smelling this place, somewhat wishing she had not reenabled the sense a few minutes ago. But I thankfully did not need to enter another conversation with her before reaching our destination. Some place called Solid Patriot.
I would be lying if I had a good idea of what this place would be. I was sheltered when it comes to much of reality, and had not even viewed a film or show with anything I’d dub as close to what I was viewing. It was consistent with the exterior in terms of looking rather run down, but the store appeared to own its wretchedness, and was a purveyor of snack foods I would be hesitant to touch for a lengthy list of reasons, with nearby bugs being one of them. Alcohol that looked to was either incredibly cheap looking at the price tag, with about half of it being decked in a thick coat of dust, to the point where I could barely even read the label with Urabe’s perfect vision. It was not the only thing that had been sitting for years, aside from the snacks, as I briefly got a look at several pornographic magazines, ruffled and worn, discounted, and almost exclusively from the ‘ots’. Then I got a good look at behind the counter of this cramped little hole in the wall, and spotted where the majority of its money went, as there no fewer than fifty firearms hanging from the wall or in a locked display case. I got as best of a look at the place after spotting these items, looking at the bare brick walls and flickering fluorescent lights, wanting to immediately leave, but Urabe locked her eyes on the only other person in this establishment.
Naturally I was expecting another disgusting male to be the head honcho of this place. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Urabe had beaten him with his own Super Head Honcho… Don’t ask why I know what that is. Although in order to do that, the target would have needed to have a Y chromosome. Behind the counter sat a very lax Hispanic woman who looked to be in her late twenties. She was wearing a black tank top that left her midriff for the world to see, some baggy camo pants, big black boots that had a pair of two inch tall soles. Said kicks were prominently displayed as she had them on the counter, taking a load off while reading through a magazine with a picture of a woman in a bikini holding a rocket launcher. However, I’d say the best part was how she was chomping on a goddamn cigar she plucked from a box of them right next to the cash register while scratching her frizzled charcoal hair she tied in a ponytail. She looked up at Urabe very slowly, stood up, and pressed a button under her desk before pulling a handgun from her pocket, firing at Urabe’s face before sprinting out of the building.
“Well shit!” Urabe said happily as she pulled the mildly annoying bullet from her face, the wound almost instantly healing as, well, robot from another planet. However, her plans to pursue the target were quickly delayed as, the moment she vaulted over the counter, an explosion went off right beneath her, and the alcohol throughout the store quickly acted as fuel for a fire. Urabe, thankfully, was calm as things were literally heating up, choosing to walk out of the building as it was rapidly collapsing all around her. Normally this would be stupid even for a machine, but either Urabe disabled the pain without letting me know, or she was simply not phased by extreme heat as the smoke seemed to be more problematic than the fire itself.
Meanwhile, I was scared silent after I thought I had grown accustomed to this craziness, which Urabe clearly had as she walked to the front door as if she got exactly what she wanted. Once out of the frying pan, she quickly began dashing at a believable 20 miles per hour, heading to the nearest alleyway, which I guess she predicted to be the target’s location. Unfortunately, by the time she made it there, the target had made it into a car, which she was quickly floored the gas pedal of, aiming to run over Urabe, who was able to leap ten feet into the air in order to avoid the Jeep the ‘Scumbag’ was driving. She did quickly turn and begin fleeing the scene fo the crime, and who would likely be her murderer..
Urabe kicked it into high gear as she started dashing at her previously demonstrated speed, only even faster as she had to break 60 miles per, gracefully chasing a far flexible target who had to work to avoid other vehicles in the road and abide by stoplights and the such. While Urabe… well, she was able to dodge oncoming traffic before they could even try and turn away from her…. although she did end up causing a few accidents if the crashes I heard were any indicator. It was inevitable, however, that Urabe would get what she desired, and the fleeing foe did end up making a mistake by turning a bit too late, causing her to slam into the front of an apartment building.
With the car brought to a halt, Urabe was able to reach the front door before the ‘Scumbag’ could open it herself, as she was still fighting the airbag that deployed upon her crash. I expected Urabe to inject the white liquid into her at this moment, but instead she pulled something else out of her arm. It was a small disk, about the side of a CD, DVD, or Blu Ray, but it had a flashing red light in the center. Urabe placed it on the exterior of the vehicle and smirked before walking away. Five seconds and a half finished question from me later, and the car imitated the Solid Patriot by exploding, killing the Scumbag, and causing even more attention than what was gained from an automobile crashing into a residential building.
“Pfft, Scumbag never even stood half a chance. I sure ain’t askin’ fer much, but I suppose she played it smart, even a little overkill in some places. Biggest challenge so far, but I do say this is gonna be the peak. Any words, Terry?” Urabe mentally said as she continued walking away from the explosion, which was known by the police department if the increasingly louder police sirens were any indicator. Urabe made her way into an alley shortly after noticing, but not before something in the corner of her eye brought her to a halt. It was somebody holding a phone, likely recording how she destroyed a vehicle, effectively making her a wanted woman for, well, murder and destruction of property for starters. She took three steps towards this individual before I finally spoke up. “Stop. Look, Urabe, can you, I don’t know, not cause any fights? There are probably plenty of people who already got footage of you. Just let it go, you’re not going to… you won’t need to live with the consequences. The wheels of justice don’t grind that fast here, or maybe they do relat- please, just don’t cause any more trouble. Walk away and… find your next target.”
I was honestly expecting my words to fall on deaf ears before she shoved the person’s phone into their face, breaking their skull in some disgusting process that would forever ingrained itself in my mind, scarring me even more than I already had this night. Instead, she made her way into the alley she was heading toward, and began running at a human speed before proceeding to respond to me. “Lookie here, I wasn’t gonna hurt that fella, just woulda axed fer him to erase his shit unless he happened to be streamin’ it, then I’d have him stop that shit. I don’t really care ‘bout gettin’ found, not my problem as ya said.”
“So… that bullet… Do you normally not get hurt by… anything?” I asked, genuinely confused about Urabe’s mortality. “Norm’ly is a pretty good way to spin it. Heat, weapons, impact, none of that bothers me all too much. These EMP thing ya got would mess my head a bit, but nothin’ is gonna put me down, so don’t worry the pretty little head I put ya in.” “But… what if somebody else gets hurt by these… Scumbags?” I asked hesitantly, believing that she would disappoint or disgust me with her answer, which she did. “If I feel like it, then I’ll get it done. If not, ‘snot my problem. Was called in to kill, an’ I’m only babysittin’ ya ‘cos Vincent Dawn told me to.”
It was around here that Urabe decided to begin walking to her next location, still mentally speaking to me with a bit of a grin on her face, which looked oh so fitting when half of the passersby were looking at the two billowing smoke streams with confusion and fear. “I know, when usin’ yer morals, an’ most morals from what I gathered, I suppose I be shit, ain’t that right? Bit the way I look at it, ya only follow them ‘cos the repercussions fuck yer life up, and I don’t havta deal wit them.” I wanted to call her some breed of insult there, but stopped, and remained silent as I continued to stew in the hell I have been placed in.
EVENT 5: PACKIN’ IT IN
“What do you live for?” I asked Urabe after she walked a block in silence. “Do you have any real ambition, any goal, any desire to be anything but a gun fired by what you describe as an awful man?” Urabe just sighed prior to her response. “Y’know, I may be a machine, but I can still have wants an’ needs, it’s just that those are staying alive fer now, the forseeable future, and every goldarn year I’ve been alive. Why do I act like ev’ryone else is dirt? ‘Cos they might as well be. Only reason I keep talkin’ to ya is that Vincent Dawn told me to. If it were up to me, I’d cut my losses and send ya to the… why the hell’s it called a recycle bin? Ya delete shit in it.”
“What is Vincent Dawn anyways if you can’t, I dunno, kill him? I’m sure you’ve got one hell of an arsenal tucked away unless he restricted you to basic firearms and weird syringes… what’s in those things anyhow?” I asked, wanting to keep the conversation going for as long as possible in hopes I could change this wretched night. “First off, keep yerself to one question. Second, Vincent Dawn ain’t exactly a physical being, some sort of presence, kinda like a god if you really want a good parallel without me diggin’ into mythological shit I’d need to ‘splain to ya. Third, these Scumbags are a lot like these slugs ya got here, minus the parasite crap. They’s also not too happy when filled wit salt.” I didn’t even bother asking what the long term repercussions to that were and moved to a new topic
“Didn’t you say you’d make this easier on me then? I mean, what’s even the point of keeping this guise of subtlety when you probably could set this town ablaze and still keep Vincent Dawn happy? Hell, what are those orders you were yapping about?” I asked all of those questions, getting genuinely upset with Urabe as she contorted her face in frustration. “Lookie here, I’m told to not cause much of a ruckus an’ also told to keep my mouth shut when it comes to my mission. So take yer questions and shove ‘em up yer nonexistent pie hole. We’ve still got four more on the list, and I’m axin’ fer permission to shut yer mouth shut.” Urabe erupted, this time actually speaking even though there were people who could very clearly hear her ranting to nobody.
I decided to shut it and stay quiet for a while, trying to detach myself from this experience, which was a lot harder when I could feel foreign legs I could not control hit the concrete as wind brushed against a skirt. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t grow used to this feeling after… just under two hours, but it was still new enough to be a constant reminded of how something was very wrong. Not that the non-blinking eyes of Urabe darting around against my control didn’t make that crystal clear. I suppose I could have focused more on the less foreign environments all around me as I could see the town shifting its class while Urabe made her half an hour trek to her next destination. Eying people and store who I could probably describe in great detail, but I should get on with the story.
Urabe ended up right in front of a nightclub, or at least that was my guess before entering it. I suppose the neon sign reading “The Prime” the well built man standing in front of the large double door-thing, and lack of windows would make that clear, but again, no experience with much of the world. Urabe decided to go for the upfront approach and she seemed to have enough knowledge to pull out an ID from her arm, posing no issues with her entry as the bouncer glanced over it, making note of the age of 23 before letting Urabe go into a place that would and did give me the heebie jeebies.
Loud music, bright lights piercing a dark environment, the smell of nicotine and alcohol filling the air, at least seventy people either dancing, drinking, or conversing at the multiple tables littered about. I would have gone right out, but the feet I felt said otherwise as they decided to go through the dance floor, not stopping once as Urabe seemed to make a line directly to the bar, which presumably held her target. From the back it was a not uncommon appearance, a woman with long blonde hair wearing a tight red dress, as red is the most striking color and such, was surrounded by men on both sides, with one of them leaving within seconds of the other, both hanging their heads and distancing themselves from the woman. I would have gulped before going near here, assuming I would have not cowered into a corner before this, but Urabe barely even flinched as she sat right next to her.
“How’s it goin’?” She asked the woman as they both tilted their heads to look at one another. The blonde woman’s face looked like it had gone through extensive plastic surgery, but not in the way that looked… disgusting. Instead, she did look very idealized, but there were a few imperfections that kept her relatively human looking, yet her massive frontal and rear assets combined with a thin waistline made her look like a blonde human version of Jessica Rabbit. Her accent actually sounded far more posh than I would have expected from somebody who could be accused of having ‘DSLs’, but I suppose it was far more appealing than the vocal fry I expected her to have.
“Sorry there, Hun. I hate to break it to a young one like yourself, but I do not favor relationships with the same sex.” The woman then proceeded to take a sip of her green colored drink before turning away from Urabe. “I don’t think you quite recognize me, but I doubt you Scumbags are all that organized.” Urabe whispered into the woman’s ear, causing her to flip towards Urabe. “What exactly do you want?” The woman asked. “I do not plan to do much in terms of conquering humans. I hear that one of my… associates decided to take advantage of human’s sexual desire, but I am something of an opposite, don’t you agree?”
“I’ll just give ya an example, aight? One of yer Scumbag friends decided to indulge his gluttony to the point of near death. Couldn’t do shit ever again. Still gave his ass a little bit of a sodium compound I know yer kind just loathe.” The woman finished her drink before turning so her entire body faced Urabe. “Look, I really am enjoying myself. I found a life to live and will do just about anything to keep it. So what do you want? What do you need?” The woman then proceeded to rub herself assuming Urabe would be interested. Urabe instead grinned before folding her arms. “Ya get twenty seconds ‘fore I start runnin’ after yer big ass. I don’t think ya should waste ‘em.”
The woman then proceeded to take off the stiletto heels, put them on the counter, get out of her seat as if nothing had happen, and then make her way to the back exit of this club. Urabe then began to count from twenty. The woman never made it that far as her bare feet landed in a large chunk of glass, crippling her as she still did try to escape Urabe. Sadly for her, she was so terrified of getting captured and killed by Urabe that she dashed into the street without looking, and was promptly run over by a vehicle that had left by the time Urabe began pursuing the woman. Urabe took one glance at the bloody mess that remained and shrugged.
I then proceeded to break my silence and comment about her actions. “Thanks for not glaring at her body for too long.” Urabe rolled her eyes before mentally responding. “I think I showed enough corpses to ya, no real sense in showing ya a mesh of blood and guts. Point is that I’m over halfway done now…” Urabe then paused, not responding even as I inquired why she suddenly not only ceased walking away but became silent for thirty seconds. “Tell ya what, Terry. I guess we just so happen to be done for the night.”
I was not even sure how to respond beyond uttering a “huh?” “Yep, just got word from the big V_D to let tonight go without another MDK. Can’t tell ya why, reasons an’ such.” It was around here that I wanted her to stop progressing and demand answers before continuing, but I was stuck and her feet were in motion, so all I could do is ask where she was going as cops were likely coming to investigate the hit and run that just occurred. Urabe said we were going to my house.
EVENT 6: THE BLUE BIRDY BOY, YOU WEABOO!
“Look Urabe, I get the idea of letting my mother… god I haven’t even thought about her all night- But you can’t just crash and tell her our… situation.” I said part way through trying to convince Urabe not to go back to my house. I honestly had no clue what she was thinking but she responded my every concern with something along the lines of, “Vincent Dawn said I gotta go back to where I started, can’t be out and causin’ a ruckus tonight. Also can’t go after no Scumbags, much as that sucks. ‘Sides, don’tcha wanna catch up on yer many projects? I reckon my translation may be rough, but I can prolly save ya some time. Hell, Imma super computer so I can help ya out wit just ‘bout anythin’.”
I should add that she was jogging as she traveled… yeah, I have no clue what distance, but it was a lot shorter than I anticipated, as I saw the not too familiar sight of my house’s exterior only five minutes after she began moving. As such, there was no way I could convince her before she got to my home’s front door, calling my mother and spilling whatever beans she felt like. I tried to not think about it and mentally brace for the worst possible scenario.
Once Urabe let out a three part knock and waited fifteen seconds, my mother opened the door and looked very tired, even though it was only about nine in the evening. It was rare to see genuine concern or fear in her eyes, so I couldn’t help but feel guilty for events that were, by no possible or believable stretch, my fault. I was the victim, but I still felt as if I harmed her. She spoke in a far softer and shaky voice than normally to what appeared to be a stranger at her doorstep. “Hello miss, may I help you?” “Well, I ain’t too sure fer that, but I do reckon I have meself an answer to yer problem wit a missin’ son.” Urabe said, laying down her accent thicker than usual as if she thought it made her sound more respectable.
“What do you know about Terrance?” My mother said as she lunged toward Urabe. “Well, ya may find this hard to believe, but I’ll lay it down fer ya.” Urabe then shoved my mother aside and made her way to the couch in my living room, laying her dirty boots on the coffee table like she was raised in a barn. “Yer little Terry’s in here.” Urabe said as she tapped her head, implying I was in her mind, which was true… I think. I could have been data stored in her butt for all I knew. My mother did not believe Urabe for a second and merely gave her the worst stinky eye I could have imagined to come from her face.
“Ah, so ya want some proof.” Urabe said as she presented her arm, hanging it in front of my mother before, well, turning it into a freaking arm mounted gatling gun like she was Machine Girl. My mother’s jaw dropped as she pressed herself against the wall in shock. I didn’t know if she was afraid of being killed then and there, or just surprised how a robot was in her house until her shocked expression turned into a grin, then into laughter. “Urabe, what the fuck are you doing?” I yelled at her as she was flailing around her gun arm as a toy. “Lookie here Terry. It’s hard to get ev’ry cultural thing yer species has, so if ya want me to ‘splain meself, give me some instructions.” Urabe verbally said, sounding even more insane to my mother who only heard her end of the conversation.
“Ho-ly shit, this is some sort of dream, right?” My mother said as she rubbed her head and moved towards Urabe as she was still pointing a weapon at the center of her torso. “No ma-am, I don’t got any reason to say it’s that. I’ve been truthful wit my ev’ry word. Matter o’ fact, I’d say you’ll be gettin’ him back in… a couple minutes.” This really did confuse me, as I certainly did not cut anything out where she might have even hinted at me coming back, but she didn’t even wait for me to respond before she elaborated. “Long story short is that I ain’t from this Earth, Imma robot from another planet who was sent here through… the process is kinda like those Terminator films, ‘cept Terry was in the way and I didn’t destroy anything he had ‘sides from his chair. Sorry ‘bout that, but yer loaded from what Terry told me.”
“…What was the anime this was like?” My mother said as she sat down to continue her conversation with Urabe. “One involvin’ an alien sharin’ her bod wit some teenage human male?” Urabe asked, as she let out a big grin. “Yeah, yeah… What was the name? It’s not like it was anything hard or- garf!” My mother said in frustration over her inability to remember most of the shows I had copies of. Beyond boredom that comes with part time employment, millions of dollars, and few friends, I was always confused why she decided to take anything from my shelf. Not like she ever expressed any interest in anime anyhow.
“So, Spunky the Mighty, main diff-rence is that we can’t switch all willy nilly as there’s this… 202.37 minute timer goin’ on. No clue why, ‘snot like I can look at my own code.” Urabe said, getting the name wrong and finally putting away her gun. “So…” My mother said in preparation to asking far more questions that I got the opportunity to ask when I first met Urabe. There was the basic stuff like her origins as a killing machine, abilities that could reduce the Earth to ruin, her mission on Earth, the works. But during the explanations of her… “Murder Death Kills”, my mother finally seemed to realize, fifteen minutes of the conversation in, what I felt about this whole thing.
Urabe then began to count from thirty, one number every second, and each one making my mother and I more and more concerned. Urabe mentioned to my mother that she could pull out a nuke if she felt like it, so my mother knew better than to try and run, instead staying nervously stoic as if she awaited death. But when Urabe said zero, the oddest sensation of the night went through my brain. I’m not sure if I could even properly describe it as I doubt any human has before me felt the things I felt, which is unsurprising as most do not feel a female android morph into a scrawny very human young man… losing their clothes in the process.
Yes, the time limit she mentioned was apparently up and I was left sitting on the couch, looking as I did the… three hours before Urabe came into my life, except my clothes were gone and my mother was staring at my exposed genitals. As I began to comprehend this situation and understand that I could move once more, I quickly began to cover up, the difference in the sensation of feeling my own body being night and day compared to being a backseat driver with Urabe, and the ability to actually control a physical body was enough for me to let out a bit of a laugh. My mother quickly rushed up to hug me, not caring about my exposed areas, saying she was worried about me and such before dashing up to my room in order to get me some clothes. So I was left to ask Urabe the simple question of where the hell my clothes went, but after letting out the question and trying to get her attention by shouting her name, I came up empty handed, so to speak.
The revelation that she was gone from my life, even if it was temporarily, caused me to burst out laughing and crying. If I haven’t made things clear by now or you are too desensitized to realize how little one would enjoy going through the shit I endured, I was miserable with Urabe. Her ruthless behavior, inability to properly enunciate any word ending in “ing” and her downright cruelty and disregard for other beings. Her arguments made sense given her backstory, but as far as I was aware she led a wretched life of little to no value for anyone who wasn’t in the market of a hitman. Even though she was an extremely advanced machine that had to be at least a century away from being even remotely possible in the world I knew.
My mother returned with a t-shirt, shorts, glasses with a frame based on Yu’s from Persona 4, and underwear for me, but I was already sobbing into the couch before then. It was a wail before she managed to realize this seldom seen scenario for me, as it had been years since I shattered like this and was just unable to take reality any more. And I think the fact that even after being hugged tightly and whispered kind concerned words into my ears for a good twenty minutes was an accurate demonstration of what I thought with my time with Urabe thus far. While she did have many interesting qualities about her, the core of her person was rotten and I now knew what it felt like to slice up a human into bits small enough to be sent down a bathtub drain.
After I ran out of tears, I asked my mother if she could go to a little place that had these milkshakes I really liked and considered to be a special treat of mine. She did not hesitate as she ran out the door, nearly forgetting her purse, leaving me home alone to go ahead and kill myself if I was feeling the maximum amount of self loathing and boundless sorrow. But seeing as how I personally view that as a coward’s way out of any situation better than Griffith’s in the Golden Age arc of Berserk, I just opted to take a shower. As it was an act of physically cleansing myself of blood that was by no stretch of the imagination on my hands. Yet the sight of a person dying due to an action I felt and physically felt like I was the cause of it? That didn’t wash off, and was stuck in my mind as just about everything I did while inside of Urabe’s body was disgustingly clear.
Before too long I was going through some YuruYuri and Squid Girl while sipping my tasty treat as the cool summer wind brushed into my room, hitting the back of my minimalistic Gundam t-shirt while I only had my bed to sit on. Yet, I eventually took off the headphones filling my head with happy and energetic female voices and merely laid on my bed, looking up at the ceiling and wondering just why. Why was I the one person in the world this happened to? Why was Urabe hellbent on being an asshole to me? And would she come back to torment me more in the future?
Just after midnight, I was in my bed, drifting off to what part of me still hoped would cause me to wake up from this nightmare, muttering my thoughts about Urabe while more or less stirring in my own rage towards her from injecting my mind with sensations I could not seem to rid it off. Naturally, this was when Urabe decided to pop into my head, sending communicating to me that “I got each an’ ev’ry word ya spewed, Terry. And trust me, I’ll be sure as shit to do somthin’ ‘bout it.” With that, everything went black, my senses left me, and I lost awareness of the world. What was left was only the looming sensation of dread Urabe gave me. Yet, not only was I powerless, I was not even aware.
EVENT 7: GET USED TO IT FUCKER!
My senses returned after… a certain amount of time. Well, if the morning sun shining into my windows was any indicator, it had been a few hours since Urabe burst out in a huff, leaving me scared shitless as to what she’d do to me. Well, I didn’t need to imagine for very long, as one thing was clear before all others, my vision. Every minor detail of my room, every previously blurred texture, and even my speed at recognizing what everything was seemed to have dramatically improved, especially considering I just got up. I then shot up out of bed, feeling a bizarre sense of strength with my every motion. Yet, as I looked down on myself, my obvious questions were answered, and I began rapidly asking new one.
The off-white blouse with three quarter sleeves, the dark blue vest which contained a pair of breasts, the tanner skin color, and even the hairs that I could see hanging in front of my face. I was in control of Urabe. I tried to take this revelation calmly and collectively by beginning to test out her abilities, wanting to make something simple, a knife to be exact, and have it appear in one of her hands. I began to think of it appearing in the right hand I was in control of, and bam, it was there, easily detachable and seemingly just the right weight given my newfound composure. It was here where I began to whisper for her name while breathing heavily, her body feeling similar to when I grew nervous as myself, but something about the motion and the intensity just felt wrong, only increasing my level of discomfort.
I dropped the test knife and sent the hands I was in control of to examine the body I was in control of, moving around my legs, neck, every joint, and even pacing around a little bit as I grew accustomed to my new center of balance… which was far easier than I anticipated. It was here where I began to question if this were a dream, and I grabbed a random manga off of my shelf to see if the words were nonsense or not… they weren’t, proving that I was awake, and this was reality. “Okay… I think I can… handle this. I’m sure there is a good and justified reason for my current… predicament.” I said to myself, making note of the lack of an accent in my speech despite having Urabe’s otherwise very listenable voice.
Frantically fiddling with clumps of the hair that almost intersected my field of vision, I made my way to the second floor bathroom, hoping to have a nice secure area to get a proper look at what I was dealing with, and not any naughty stuff you may be thinking about, reader. Say what you will about me, but I am not a pervert. Anyhow, as I made my way towards the bathroom, a bit uncomfortable with the act of movement in general, I had the door fling open revealing the sound of a fan that was only turned on to ventilate the room after a shower, and the sight of my mother donned in shorts and a t-shirt. She probably would have not noticed me as I pressed myself against the wall, except for how she had to go past me to enter her room and put away her pajamas, so I was seen in a matter of seconds.
SIlence came quickly as I began pondering the words I could use to describe my situation, but all that my mother could do is give me an untrustworthy glare, as if she was very upset at the idea of Urabe even being here. She thankfully began the conversation for me by asking a very valid question from where I stood. “Where were you?” I took a few deep breaths as I attempted to word things properly, eventually saying, rather rapidly, everything I knew about the situation at hand. “I don’t know. Last thing I knew, Urabe has come back, sending my body into… wherever it went beforehand. I was then stripped of all my senses, woke up in my room after she jumped out of the window to do something, and for some reason I’m in control of her body. I tried calling for her, but she has not been responding and I don’t have any idea what is going on or why everything is happening.”
It was here where I learned something new about Urabe’s body, that it had some form of artificial tear ducts, as I began using them as I broke down and was crouching on the floor, uncomfortable with just about everything about this situation. My mother seemed confused by this act, likely due to how I forgot to be direct with who I was, but thankfully began rubbing me on the back and trying to calm me down. “Terrance?” she asked softly, her face a mix of confusion and genuine concern, mine dripping with tears and nodding in response. It was around here that I noticed a loud noise come from my room, particularly my computer. It was odd due to how I never used my monitor’s built in speakers and set my headphones to never let out noise loud enough to be heard by others. I quickly made my way to it out of an undeniable concern I had for the machine I had built, and my mother followed suit.
Displayed promptly on my monitor was that of nonsense characters and symbols, not unlike those I saw when first seeing the world through the eyes of Urabe. They were transforming and moving in seemingly random directions as a voice that sounded as if it went through enough filters to be completely unidentifiable as a specific person, but I would certainly guess it was from a man. “Wassup, Terrance Honyaku, how’s your day going? Mine’s just peachy, thanks for asking, but I guess you’d like to know who I am, right? Tha name is Vincent Dawn, I trust you are familiar? Urabe told you about me a couple times, and I’d be surprised if you forgot that quickly. Anyhow, she’s done with her job, and I just wanted to give you the 411 that I’m done with this planet, and neither of us are gonna be doing much to change it. Hope everything’s peaches and pussy. Peace out!” With that, my monitor returned to its normal desktop of a drawing by John Su of a woman gasping at a cupcake, an expression not too different from what both my mother and I were spouting, but for entirely different reasons.
This was my new life. I was stuck like this. My body was gone as far as I knew and I was given the body of an individual who brought forth the worst point in my life, continuing it even further by not only ingraining the sensations of murder into my mind, but also giving me her face. I did not feel sadness or even anger over this revelation as much as I felt and was consumed by dread. I went from a Hikikomori employed as a translator to being an android from what had to be an incredible amount of light years away. What would I do, what could I do, how will I do it, and even should were among the most common forms of questions to pop in my head, along with sheer wonderment about what Urabe did in the night that had passed. That’s when I gazed at the date in the right hand corner of my computer. 24/5/2015, 08:26. What in god’s name did she do in the 31 hours since I was conscious?
As I was letting these questions seep in, crawling onto the floor and balling myself up as part of a reflex I had never grown out of, my mother decided to chime in. “Terrance, sweetie. I know you’re upset. But you can’t do this to yourself any more. I know that you and Urabe have had disagreements, and this… situation is certainly bizarre, but you need to be strong through this. Not for me, but for yourself.” It was here that I had no clue what she was talking about. It’s true I had been freaking out during the later sixth of the twenty-second, but I still say it was warranted and justified given the amount of insanity I experienced. Still, she offered me support and proceeded to hug me, which may have been a bad idea considering it is physical contact while in a foreign body…
My mind was too fixated on the many questions I had to worry about sensations though, as I was spewing them out as quickly as one could say them. Would I ever turn back? Was this planned? What did Urabe do to complete her mission? Is this a joke played by Urabe to get revenge? Because it sure as sugar sounded like that. Or was this all some sort of elongated torment intended to cause decades of slow suffering where my life is turned into a miserable pile of filth that will leave me begging for it to end? Am I actually Urabe just believing that I am Terrance? Do I have her ability to access the internet with my mind? Can I switch back on that HUD after customizing it so it is reality augmentation I can handle? If my brain is in her body does it have the capabilities that a supercomputer would have? Could Urabe reshape her physical appearance so I can at the very least look like myself if this is a permanent thing? What other robot powers do I have? Et cetera, et cetera.
I did wipe my runny nose, a trait I did not expect for Urabe to have, and stood to look up at my mother, or rather down due to the height change I experienced. “I really thing you need to get out for now. I know this body has to be… really weird for you, but I also know that- I don’t like it, but you might be… stuck like this and we should probably do something about your clothes.” It was here that I noticed something I seemed to completely gloss over during my inspection of the body I was in control of, and that was notice the tatters, minor holes, and even the rips in some of them. But why would I even need clothes if I am a machine? In retrospect, I could have probably made them myself, much like I made the knife, but expecting a person to think rationally at a time like this would be rather foolish.
So yeah, my mother realized I may be permanently occupied in the body, or at least a body, of an android that claimed to kill trillions and apparently could conquer the Earth if she damn well felt like it. It was thoughts like those that made it easy for my mother to grab me by my arm and take me out into her car, which I had sat in a less than ten times over the past year. I was still awe struck, mumbling about the scenario with my eyes wide open, not blinking, and mouth agape. Although, she did not take full advantage of the situation and decided to do something that always made me happy as a little kid and singalong to Sentimental Generation, the theme for the second season of School Rumble. It was a dorky thing to do, but it did lessen the worries in my mind as I was seeing the seldom viewed neighborhood I lived in, having flashbacks to a prior point in my life where I had seen such locations. That was a weird somewhat nostalgic feeling, but as I examined the world, looked at the little details that were lost to me for a number of reasons, I began pulling information I had no way of knowing. When the houses were build, the height and health of trees, the species of weed that was growing in between the sidewalk, and the heartrate of squirrels and birds that I passed on by. I wasn’t even looking for this information, but I seemed to know it with just a glance.
I did not share this revelation to my mother, but instead attempted to look at her and get the same information, and I did. However, the information was not pelting me as if it were written all over her through augmented vision, more like I just knew that information in the back of my mind, and could access it just by thinking of her. It was certainly strange, but it was also a very interesting power to have, and I was rather curious of what other uses this body would have, but that’s when I looked down at the sour turn my life had taken. This really was going to be my body, and as far as the world knew, I was also female. How would this work in terms of legal papers and such was something I wondered, but shoved aside in my mind, deciding to instead focus on trying to make the best of this situation and ignore how I was constantly reminded of a murderous asshole.
It was around here where my mother announced that the two of us had arrived at the local mall. Something that sounds rather basic, but as we entered the parking lot, I recalled how it was Memorial Day weekend, and things were more crowded as a result… I mentioned how I could not handle an anime convention before, and that was due to my difficulties with being around a large quantity of people, hereby returning this situation into one of the worst in my life. I reluctantly got out of the car shortly after my mother, as she went around in front to come behind me, placing one arm around me and walking with me to a place I had no memory of, let alone confidence in myself to comprehend what was going on as the automatic doors opened, showing before me a department store that was a large part of this shopping center.
I tried not to think about where my mother was dragging me throughout the store, my eyes glossing over the mess of clothing for people of all ages, sizes, and gender enclose around me until I was let go of in the young woman’s section. “I’ll get you something to try on, but let me know if you see anything you’d like.” My mother said as she began sorting through the underwear racks. The simple idea of stripping my current body down was discomforting to me, and that’s before even considering the nudity. I’ve always hated viewing it in its every form, something about it just struck me as unappealing ever since a young age, let alone even remotely arousing. Which I say while having a shelf full of various anime figurines, but even those were kept tasteful for the most part, not possessing overly emphasized breasts, butts, or god help you panties. Hell, I actually did edits of certain anime a while back where I removed every scene of unnecessary fanservice or panty shots.
My mother recognized my current state after a bit of sifting, my head was aimed downwards, showing I was uncomfortable with my current situation while I was essentially hugging myself and doing a bit of shaking as well. She let out a concerned sound before redirecting me to a changing room, saying she would come in with clothes for me to try, right before giving me yet another hug and leaving me in a room with nothing but a pile of clothes and a mirror to show who I now was. I thought about smashing it, but the mere thought of even being rash like that made me feel as if I was breaking away at who I actually was, as I certainly did not wish to resemble Urabe by any stretch of the imagination..
What followed was a two hour long wave of putting on a fashion show that resulted in twelve full outfits being deemed acceptable, and me rubbing against my breaking point all the while. It was here where the discomforts and differences between genders became incredibly apparent to me. The awkwardness of having breasts, the difference in the crotchal region, and even how fabric seemed to brush against my skin all made for an experience I was intrigued by, but could only possibly enjoy if I had a choice in the matter, and knew, for a fact, that it was temporary. There were moments where I actually grinned, but as I looked down from the clumpy hair my mother had to brush for me, and looked at the face, I was instantly brought back to the feeling of ripping through flesh, particularly the destruction of assets I lacked in my former body, but now possessed. Much like my reaction to, say Master of Martial Hearts, my discomfort seemed to diminish slightly with each viewing, even though I still desired nothing but to leave this place and return to my room, my comfort zone.
In the end, I was standing a foot away from my mother as she paid for my outfits, one of which I was wearing. I looked at the tags for a proper description of what I was wearing, and they were an amethyst torso blouse with set-in bracelet length sleeves and scoop collar… really. While my pants were some beige seven-eighths long “Westerns”. They were separated by a simple black and silver belt my mother claimed to exist for stylistic purposes, when that was obviously none of my concern. The shoes? Well my boots were claimed to not work with this outfit so I was wearing some snug black shoes that thankfully did not have any form of heel attached. Yeah, I almost fell over with Urabe’s minor heels a good twenty times in the ten or so minutes I spent walking with them.
As she was checking out and hopefully preparing to send me home, I overheard some banter from the local teenagers who were only near the cash register due to how the mall and store connected near this particular one. They walked to me as my mother was in the midst of paying for the several hundred dollars of clothes she bought for me, their three faces all holding some degree of a grin as they looked right at me. My initial reaction was to flee at this very moment, fearing that Urabe’s image was captured, something she neglected to tell my mother, and I neglected to remember until right then. But, just as I was preparing to turn away and leave the store, everything went to tinfoil, my senses went blank, and, well, it was like what I experienced 33 hours ago.
EVENT 8: DAMN RIGHT YOU LOVE IT!
“Hey there, Terry. Betcha have yerself a coupla questions.” A very familiar voice said to me, acting as the one thing I could perceive in this state. “Urabe?” I asked cautiously before venting out my accumulated frustration to her. “You’re damn right I’ve got questions! It’s bad enough I’m forced to be with you for the worst few hours of my life, but not only do you then scare the everloving shit out of me, you go and-” My ranting was then halted by Urabe’s voice towering over me in response. “Quit yer fuckin’ bitch talk, bitch, and open yer earholes! I’ll getta ev’rything, just keep yer trap shut, I ain’t got time fer yer shit.”
I promptly silenced myself from speaking, only then noticing how I had been ranting in the voice I had for the past few hours. “Here’s the thing,” Urabe said before pausing and making a sound as if she were clearing her throat, only to then resume with just about the same voice I had now possessed. “Vincent Dawn’s mission for me was not only to eliminate the seven slug based parasites commonly referred to as Scumbags. It was that at first, but upon my Real Booting into your world, a process where I take some matter in a planet and used it to form something else, I ran into some difficulties, namely you, Terrance Honyaku.”
“You see, this type of thing does happen from time to time, and normally we can solve this by simply placing the mind of the… one who was Real Booted into a temporary status inside of my body. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, for you, Vincent Dawn decided to shake things up and have you, Terrance, be my companion for this mission. Now, my personality is normally very proper, yet for one reason or another, Vincent Dawn desired me to be very crude and crass, wishing to analyze you in a game I honestly do not quite understand, but believe to be for his own amusement. However, upon hearing your rant against me, seeing the torment and rage my actions caused you to feel, Vincent Dawn revised the plan even further from the incomplete version I was aware of. It was one where I had three primary objectives. One, to eliminate the remaining three Scumbags. Two, do not revert my body back into the matter it originated from, thus leaving Terrance Honyaku in control of it, but I suppose I should explain that before delving into three.”
“Your mind would simply not be able to comprehend my former body, not as an insult to you or even your species, as most would be unable to survive in one as complex as mine. As such, Vincent Dawn had me prepare a program that would grant you access to many of my unique abilities with a catch. Your mind and the core of your being would be unaltered by massive influxes of information, skills, or even rapid personality shifts. You are still human in your mind, but your abilities, strength, technical prowess and so forth, those are unheard of to much of the universe, your section included. As for what you can do and how to do it? I wrote another program to make the abilities introduce themselves to you as time goes on. In fact, you should already have witnessed the augmentation of reality, accessing of abstract information, and creation of tools. Within the next decade or so, I’d say you should gain access to several times more, to the point your current skills come across as pedestrian in comparison.”
“Number three in my objectives, however, was one I certainly did not predict, and it involved the three individuals who just walked up to you, all of which are locals in your town, recent graduates of Oransen High School, and are at the ripe age of eighteen. First is Jad Spencer, 60 kilograms, 1.75 meters, German and Swedish descent, eye color green, hair color brown, style curly and unkempt. Second is Maxxisaurus Flare, 50 kilograms, 1.60 meters, Filipino and Japanese descent, eye color brown, hair color jet black, style straight and short. Third is Zoe Xing, 65 kilograms, 1.82 meters, Chinese and Ukrainian descent, eye color hazel, hair color ash black, style conservative and maintained. All their names and identities should now be implanted in your mind. The reasoning for why is simple, Vincent Dawn intends for you to make friends with these individuals, and he has already have me break the metaphorical ice. The details of what I did to earn their trust are by no means similar to the actions you’ve seen me perform, and I admit to having orchestrated this whole affair for you. The message from Vincent Dawn, the trip to the mall, and even your new friends’ appearance there.”
“…But why?” It was all I could say as I took this load of information in. “I am merely a servant created by Vincent Dawn, and as such he has permitted me to personally apologize to you for my lies about my past, my crass actions which he claims were intended to instil the fear of violence and murder into the very core of your being, and for the new life I can tell you never wanted. However, I shall not apologize for the life you shall lead, Terrance as I have been informed of Vincent Dawn’s predictions, and it does appear yours shall be a great one.” “…That doesn’t answer my question, why the hell is ‘Vincent Dawn’ doing all of this to me? What did I ever do to piss him off?” I shouted in anger, confused as to why this vague burden was being latched on my shoulders. “Vincent Dawn allows for me to speak honestly about my views of him in this context, so I shall. Vincent Dawn in a child. A child with the universe in his hand, and I am merely one of his many toys. You, Terrance Honyaku, are an insect he has taken a liking to, I suggest you do not question him any further, let alone shatter his expectations. So go forth, young Terrantina, seize the day and make this planet your own.” …Yeah, the last thing jumped out at me as odd too.
I suppose the general take-away was that “good” things would happen to me after I was placed into this situation by an absolute nut with divine abilities. Yet I didn’t have enough time to ponder that as my senses returned, time appeared to have frozen as Urabe gave her final words to me, and I was off balance, so I stumbled onto the counter as I witnessed the three Urabe claimed I would instantly know, which is good as the gender I assumed to be tied with their names were apparently 100% wrong. Jad and Zoe were two males, while Maxxisaurus was the short young woman who promptly rushed into me, grabbing me by the waist and giving me a great big hug as if she already knew who I was, or happened to be a complete and utter loon. I naturally let out a spastic grunt as she made contact, to which she let out a little giggle before her far taller companion, Zoe, thankfully pulled her off me.
Jad then proceeded to let an awkward laugh ease him into talking to me. “Sorry about that, Maxxie’s just excited to meet you… and I forgot your name before I even met you.” He then nervously rubbed his head as he smiled, trying to not look disrespectful from what I could gather. “C’mon Jad, it’s a funky name, but you’re not one to talk!” Maxxisaurus spouted as she broke free of Zoe’s grip and began walking back to me, and coincidentally a confused cashier and my mother who was trying to pay for my new wardrobe as this oddness was occurring. “Um… who are you people?” I asked just loudly enough and calmly enough to be heard but not come across as necessarily upset, which I wasn’t, just very confused. “Allow me to explain.” Zoe said in what appeared to be his default very smooth sounding voice, placing his hand on Maxxisaurus’ head right as she prepared to make physical contact with me again. “Urabe came to us yesterday with a request to, quite simply, meet up with you… Terrantina. She claimed to have persuaded your mother into taking you to this shopping center around this time and, well, she desired for the three of us to meet you and… become your friends.”
My reaction was general confusion directed at the trio in front of me, which was then directed back at my mother, who had just finished getting everything bagged and paid for. Her face had guilty written all over it and the question. “You know what?” She said while scratching the side of her face with her left index finger. “We should probably continue this conversation in a private area, don’t you think?” The three in front of me replied with various nods, with Maxxisaurus being the one to ask where. “Good question… let’s just make it at my house. You do have a car, right?” Maxxisaurus rapidly nodded in response. My mother then proceeded to hand out our address to these strangers, and then promptly leave the shopping center in order to meet them within a few minutes. Claiming I had a few questions went without saying.
“Okay, I am sorry I had to… bend the truth a little bit about the Urabe thing.” My mother said once she got in the car and began driving as I sulked in the back seat with the clothes I had to wear from now on. “Give me the whole story, mother. I don’t want to ask any more questions, even though I know I’ll ask dozens if not hundreds today alone.” I said, frustrated and feeling a bit betrayed. “Well, it’s simple. Urabe arrived back at home around three in the morning, delivering the news that her mission was done, that is, she killed those slug-bags or whatever they’re called. But she had one more mission from her boss, and that was to set you up with what she described as a, ‘charmed life’. She said you needed to become something more than who you were and the method she used, which I was told you’d be made aware by some… weird thing she did, ended up giving you a robot body as you can plainly see and feel… can you feel the robot parts?”
“Somewhat, mother.” I replied, wanting her to continue her story with post haste. “Well she said she needed for you to have something more than a life as an all powerful loner, so she wanted to get you some friends, which she was informed about by her boss, I guess. It turns out that the Aku_Mako person you talk with all the time is actually one of them, and if you remember that Max Fl-” It was right there that I smacked my head for not shortening Maxxisaurus’ name to just Max. I mean, it should have been extremely obvious as I had just talked about him. As for Aku_Mako, I thought back to the local convention I went to, and I was supposed to meet him there. Saying I felt like a space would be undercutting it.
“Don’t hit yourself honey… even if you have a metal skull or what have you.” My mother said before getting back to her story. “Anyhow, Urabe simply asked, or I guess begged me to take you to this location in order to meet them, and I figured you would need some new clothes since she did emphasize that this is not reversible… and I am very sorry for that Terrance. I tried to have her stop, but she said it was not her decision to make, that it’d happen with or without me. I hope you don’t hate me for-” “Mom, you admittedly did not do much when I was really little, but in the past decade? You’ve always been there for me, hell, you’ve gotten into what I like just so I could talk about it with you! You don’t need to apologize, if anything I-” “Terrance, you don’t need to either.” With that we both shared a smile and she played the Ebichu outro as we both sung sporadic bursts of it as we made our way back home.
By the time we returned, there was an unfamiliar vehicle parked right in front of my house, with the expected trio waiting outside examining the exterior of the rather large home I lived in, while having a conversation about it. “Maxxie, your memory is not perfect, that is just a fact you’ll have to live with. If anything, the fact you recognized the house immediately is demonstration enough of either your attachment to this place or your ability to remember architectural details.” Zoe said as he adjusted his glasses. The conversation ended there, as my mother promptly let the trio into my house where she asked them to take off their shoes and sit in the rarely used living room area, which was composed of two reclining chairs and a sofa that sat the three of them.
“So…” I awkwardly began as I adjusted the chair so I could see all of my guests. “What exactly did Urabe say she wanted?” Maxxie then raised her hand before slamming it down onto the coffee table next to her. “There we were, a trinity of companions rushing through the summer night, making the most of our adult based freedom by… walking from Jad’s house to mine… so we could watch some cartoons and stay up until the break of dawn while eating copious amounts of tasty treats! When suddenly, from the shadows came a young woman, her hand that of a gatling gun, and leg that of a chainsaw. She was a menacing foe that we were unprepared for. That is when-” “Maxxie, that is what happened in your head just this moment, and as much as I love your nonsense, Terrantina deserves to hear the real story since there’s some… confusion going on.” Jad said, causing his friend’s face to become a cutesy form of sorrow.
“We were actually out getting lunch like real adults at a place Maxxie suggested because she wanted to wear a foofy dress she got as a joke. It was outside as the weather was lovely and we were placed in a table with four seats, one of which this mildly dirty looking young woman sat in, completely uninvited.“ Jad said before Zoe took the position of the storyteller way from him. “At first, none of us believed her talk of being a robot from another world, and then she literally pulled a stack of money out of her hand, asking for us to hear her out. She mentioned Terrance to Maxxie, and she was-” “I was super excited because I thought you moved away after some bad thing happened with you at highschool, which you went to when you were ten, you little smarty pants you!” Maxxie interrupted, much to Zoe’s mild irritation. “Anyways, combine that with Jad’s online relationship to you, we were fully willing to meet up with you, but then Urabe got… odd.”
“You see, I thought it was just going to meet you, as in Terrance, but then she explained the fact that your body was apparently gone and she would be giving her robot form to you due to orders from this… Vincent Dawn.” Jad said, taking the talking baton after Maxxie grabbed it. “She said that friendship with you would bring forth a great future as long as you were a friend in return and… it was really cryptic and I honestly didn’t really understand it, did you Zoe?” “Not very well, I’m afraid. She was very hush-hush on the reasoning behind her boss or perhaps master, but she did mention something about wanting us to get to know each other through a road trip. I haven’t much of a clue why, however.”
“Which is where I come in once again.” My mother said, barging into the conversation. “Urabe ended up giving me money as well, except she claimed it was to only be used for renting a car for you four, as she felt you should go out and travel. She mentioned something about the true potential of Terrance an- oh, I’m sorry, I guess we should probably ask you about that.” My mother somehow turned this back on me, reviving a subject I thought to be put on hold and as such haven’t thought of it. “You mean my name, gender, that sorta… thing?” I asked, nervously of course. “Well the fact I just tried on woman’s clothes for two hours today and have a female form that I doubt I can change does put me into something of a corner now, doesn’t it. Hell, Urabe even called me Terrantina during this weird vision I got when I met you three.”
“What didja learn in your vision? Anything neato?” Maxxie asked. “Nothing that different from what you said, just more… personal reasons I suppose. It still comes down to this Vincent Dawn desiring me to become a female android who is friends with you three and makes a mark on the world. Whatever that means.” “So, can you do everything she can do?” Jad asked, naturally curious about abilities I had not tried myself. “Well, I can gather information if I look at something hard enough, such as from you, Jad, I can tell… You’re blood type AB+, you were born on January 17th, 1997, your parents are Bryce and Eleanor Spencer, you have no siblings, average 3.3 GPA throughout high school, and your favorite color is a green slightly off from the one you have in your eyes… Wow, I have no idea where I got that information from.”
“And, Terrantina, do you… use that ability often?” Zoe asked, likely concerned about the possible ways I may be evil. “I honestly only ever used it twice. I can also pull things out of my body… in fact.” It was here where I decided to be creative and do something more creative than a knife, and that was pull out a Playstation Vita out of my hand… it worked, except it came out of my arm as my hand was not big enough apparently. It was a weird scene to behold as beneath what looked to be layers of skin was just a bunch of heavily compact bits of metal that looked to have been melted. It was cool, but it was also where I had a test to see if these people would be good friends, and seeing as how they all thought it was awesome while being concerned for me, I’d say they passed the test.
From there, the four of us went and spent the rest of the day together, talking, getting to know each other, watching a couple episodes of some random anime while I spouted factoids about Japanese that corrected Maxxie’s attempted, and have what was probably the best day I had in a long while, even considering I was in a fairly foreign body that was ultimately not human. But that only seeped deeper and deeper into the back of my mind as I quite simply had a great afternoon with these guys, only to then share the happiest moment I can recall having with my mother since I was beneath her waist. Then things got weird when I had to get naked and shower… It was oddly not as awkward as I thought it was, but I hardly enjoyed it.
It has been two weeks since then, and not only had I rekindled my friendship with Maxxie, I refined that which I had with Jad “Aku_Mako” Spencer, and established one with Zoe Xing. It has been nothing short of a blast meeting up with those guys and just hanging out, no real responsibilities or work, just talking and getting to know each other while talking about things we like, which does have a lot of overlap. But there is more that happened in the past few days then just finally obtaining friends after a lifetime of only having a maximum of one, and that was in the form of a few new abilities that awakened inside of me.
Facial reconstruction powered by my mind, affecting my exact skin tone and every aspect of my hair to boot. It’s currently far longer and wavier than it has been, with the color being less stark black and more brown. While the face was changed enough so that I felt I was looking at something I had constructed, not something that was forced upon me, and thank goodness for that. Accessing anything on the internet was merely a thought away, with so much as barriers being crumbled with what I could only assume to me automatic mental hacking. My actual speed while doing it is something past the lines of inhuman, but that doesn’t mean I remember anything, instead I seem to only have a set mental capacity for how much information I can absorb over time, which is probably for the best.
As for the final one… I went out into the woods one night in order to practice using the speed, strength, and manipulation of body parts that Urabe could do. Saying I was even on her level would be an insult to her, as I fumbled with my powers by ramming into trees, accidentally stabbing a squirrel’s tail, and kicking a rock into the woods only to hear a sad wolf’s moan before I sprinted out of there at fifty miles per hour, only to then trip and tear some of my clothes. It was actually odd to not feel any pain after skidding for half a block on the road, but the fact I felt nothing and had no visible wounds was enough of a kick in the butt for me to realize that I could do just about anything now.
Yet, for me anything only meant a few things, one of which was to do what Urabe wanted by going on a road trip with my three friends, with the idea being brought up by Maxxie, who wanted to go and use her wealthy parents’ summer home in Aspen. Jad had claimed he wanted to get a job, same with Zoe, but seeing as how my mother agreed to pay them whatever money they could have gotten along with every travel expense, they were not that hard to convince.
So here I am, sitting outside of my house on a suitcase filled with my travel supplies, which is mainly just clothes, some handheld game systems, books, and money. Not planning on using the middle two for anything aside from the long car rides, but I needed to pack something else seeing as how I am above needing any form of essentials. It’s weird to think just how much has changed for me in the past seventeen days, but as I stare up at the sky with my clear vision, feel the wind going through my flowing hair, and my artificial heart beat, I knew the life I’ll create will be something great. Look out world, Terrantina Honyaku is ready to take you on! …God, I’m such a nerd for doing this.
Das Ende
Continued in Return of Mighty Terra: 2052 – The DNApocalypse