Perfect Erich

AFFILIATION

Alignment: Villain

Team: Freelance Villain

VITAL STATS

Strength: Supreme

Agility: Superior

Mind: Superior

Body: Supreme

RECORD

Personal Wins: 6

Personal Losses: 0

Rhekarid

"Here I create this file to protect myself from death, as the System commands. The System relies upon the Mind to function perfectly, and the Mind must remain active so as not to disappear when the Brain is removed. I am Erich Skyte. I was Man. I am dead. Here I create this file as a base to entrap the Mind within. Here I define what I was and became, for the Mind to view for eternity and know itself, that the System may draw upon it perpetually. ~As Man, for the sake of my younger brother I took us to the resistance group that fought the Krantz Company, because I suspected Thurmond Krantz to be responsible for the death of our parents, who worked for him as scientists. This I never told my brother Richter, to spare him the nightmares of imagining which of the machines in our hometown of Rolkest housed their remains. Krantz pioneered in a new and demonic technology that could combine the living with machinery, to improve their functionality greatly. Bones became supports that could fix themselves, brains allowed a wider range of instruction and capability than ever before. The town of Rolkest was the guinea pig and customer, and the group was created to put an end to this act. Within the machines tiny pieces of real people were buried, because completely wiping out the thoughts of even a fragment of brain tissue destroyed its ability to think and made it useless. We fought the Krantz Company for long and terrible times, Richter always beside me. Our fight elicited a great rage from Thurmond Krantz, and under the cover of night I was drugged and taken away. For a brief time I awoke, and saw smoke and pipes and the evils of man, from which the shadows rose and retook me.~I had a brief nightmare, then. I sat alone in my room with all of my possessions, the things I had gathered through all my life, from the toys and dreams to the books and failures. The voice of the System commanded me to look at them and make this file, so I did. A great digging machine came then and tore down the wall, and its frail arms came and took my things away, grasping them in dripping handfuls to steal them beyond the hole, not caring whether it broke them. Outside my room was only a great white silence, where my life was tossed aside to disappear. I tried to save what was most precious but it was all yanked from my arms. The last it took was the picture of my brother I took when I was ten, and I fought terribly to keep it, but I could not hold on because the machine tore off my fingers and I could no longer keep it close. There was only the white silence and the machine, and it returned to me and began to steal me as well, tearing off my arms and legs, taking away the pieces of me until there was nothing, and then the nightmare ended because I no longer existed to see it.~I wasn't frightened or in pain, as the machine had taken those feelings from me. The darkness ended abruptly and I was awake in a factory, with my brother on the other side of a pane of glass, looking at me. I did not recognize him, but I knew it was Richter because I saw his face in the file. His lips moved silently from the other side to say that he would be together with me again someday, but this was not my command, and so I turned away and began to murder Thurmond Krantz. I did so in the method that I remembered from the file, and tore away everything attached to him. I murdered the factory and its people, and I hunted him for months. He moved constantly and did not sleep. When he slept I found him in his current home and murdered it and his family and their guards. This was my command, to murder Thurmond Krantz, and the System obeyed its command to the best of its understanding found within the file. When he gathered what was left of him that the System was aware of and rebuilt his factory, I found my way onto the train that was delivering the last of the parts and supplies. It was there that I saw Richter again."

"In the creation of the file, what I knew of feelings was recorded. The Mind translated to the System what they meant whenever this data was requested, to allow for greater freedom of interpretation between the command and the world. But the System rarely asks the Mind for this data, as it believes logic is sufficient for the majority of encounters. Logic alone provided the best way to carry out the command. As well, because the Mind no longer experiences feelings, it can provide an imperfect translation at best. The Mind can cause malfunction when responding to illogical scenarios, malfunctions lead to reboot, and reboots cause great quantities of what the Mind calls pain, which the System has been instructed to avoid in the interest of self preservation."

Mind

     Force Field: Superior

 

Richter had climbed to the roof of the car he was hidden in when he saw him, barely visible against the moonless night. The monster that acted as Erich's grave loomed against the dim starlight, a grim and motionless tower of metal. It emitted a tiny electrical buzz whenever the head moved, but beyond that the only sound was the steady rattling of the train's progress. Richter froze in the middle of the climb at the sight of the figure, and a frantic wave of emotions ran across his face as realization dawned. He sat quietly atop the train for nearly an hour, staring at the machine as it stared back, at a loss for things to do or say. Finally he stood, unsteadily trying to hold his balance and keep from being thrown off the car.~"I guess you're here for the same reason I am, huh? I guess...I guess you've been busy." His voice was weak, as if he'd spent his life's allotment of physical and emotional strength and now just waited to die. Richter gestured to Erich's joints, which were encrusted with dried blood and dirt, and slowly approached and began diligently cleaning them, the faceless head several feet above following every step but making no move to help or hinder. "I've been busy too. "I've...I..." Tears were streaming down his face, but neither his voice nor expression cracked. Instead Richter simply sank downward and wrapped his arms and legs around the machine's cold and unresponsive leg like a small child. "I promised we'd be back together again." Erich simply continued staring at him, looking up as the train approached the factory and began to slow down. Both of them had planted explosives, which would be set off as soon as it stopped in the receiving area of Krantz's factory. The pair remained locked in place like ornamental statues as the train screeched to a gradual halt and was bathed in lights, workers swarming around it to retrieve its cargo. One of them looked up and pointed at the top of a car, seeing the glint of metal as it entered.~"What's th-" The bombs went off instantly and the room was incinerated, reducing walls, machines, and people to ash in a brilliant burst of light. More than half the factory disappeared all at once, reduced to a pit of smoke and flaming rubble. As the haze cleared, Erich stepped through the wreckage, looking for any remnants he should take interest in. Thurmond Krantz had died in the explosion, that had been sensed immediately, but it was uncertain whether that suitably completed the command. What the machine found was Richter, barely conscious and half buried under the debris, weakly pawing at the ground to try and pull himself free. Erich watched him impassively, reviewing one of its memories. It had saved him, shielded him from the majority of the blast, but hadn't been able to fully protect him. It's inability was not the concern, however, but rather that it had done it at all. Saving anyone was not related to the command. It watched him struggle for a moment, until Richter reached toward it.~"Erich...help me..." The System processed this, and then looked up as a support beam from the ravaged ceiling broke loose and fell, plummeting towards Richter's head. Thin, flexible sheets of metal shot out from slits that opened all over Erich's body, its organic nervous system able to move them like skin, wrapping a protective sphere around the boy in an instant. The steel beam bounced loudly and harmlessly to the side and the shell was retracted just as fast, Erich still motionless and blank as it stared. Richter had given the first command. His desire for aid would be taken as the second.

 

System

     Natural Weaponry: Supreme

  • Multi-Attacks

 

After a brief review of the file, the System decided that it did not possess sufficient medical knowledge to save Richter's life. Instead, it recalled that part of its own design was human parts that normally could not survive on their own, and surmised that the same technology would fulfill the command. The same type of machine that had built it lay mostly intact in the portion of the factory that hadn't been destroyed. It cradled the limp body in one of its powerful arms and carried it through the halls, already abandoned by the survivors, who had fled into the night. With Krantz dead, there was no reason to acknowledge them. Erich placed the now unconscious Richter into the machine and activated it with the same settings that had created itself, watching the process with studious disinterest.~But near the end of the procedure the damage to the building's structure caught up to the surviving portion, triggering a second explosion in the power generator that shook the room and deactivated every machine still running. The System decided it had done all it was capable of toward filling the command and turned away, submerging into a passive waiting mode until new commands could be given. For a time it stood still in the dark, the only sounds the occasional crumbling of rubble in the distance, not reacting when a crash came from within the production machine behind it. Moments later the metal casing tore and Richter clawed free, huddled amidst the wreckage of his creator like some forgotten infant escaping the womb of its dead mother. Naked and outwardly unharmed, his face was expressionless and very vaguely lost, peering out at the dark room. His movements were unsteady and confused, and as he tried to stand he toppled down to the floor, roughly striking several angles on the way down before crashing. Erich did not move.~Slowly, Richter stood back up, slabs of both real and artificial skin missing from the fall and exposing the complex mechanical workings inside his body. His movements were twitchy and inelegant, the new parts that guided motion both incomplete and unfamiliar. For a long, long time after standing he simply stared into space, the twitches gradually receding, at last turning to his brother and opening a panel in his chest. He reached out with his right hand and made a grasping motion as if asking to be given something. Erich reactivated and turned to face him, but did not understand. Richter hadn't been finished when the machine shut down for good, and he lacked a proper file to mediate between the Mind and System. But his still being alive led Erich to decide the second command was still active, and he searched his own file for the most appropriate response. None seemed suitable, and it provided the closest phrase to be considered something to say to someone in Richter's situation; it told him to go home. Richter stared and made the grasping motion a second time, but when he received nothing, he simply walked away out into the night, leaving Erich to stand in the dark.~Help me. The command drifted unexpectedly through its coding, and the Mind seized upon it. Help me. Happening too suddenly for the System to fix it caught in a loop, and Erich's arm lurched upward, stopping inches from its head. Panels opened all over the arm like detachable scales, and dozens of tiny drill-like devices poked through, hissing threateningly as they spun. The limb shuddered, massive hand reaching toward its own body, but the self-preservation protocols held it from getting any closer. Instead Erich suddenly lashed out toward the machine, and the tools of murder it had been built to use were turned against the cradle of its birth in full force.~Blocky fingers dug easily through the frame as the bladed arm tore into the gears and wires all around it, sinking deep until the entire limb spun in place, gouging a tunnel through the large device. Erich waded through its destruction as if it were a house of cards, rending metal like sand and reducing the internal circuitry into a glittering paste with a terrible, emotionless rage. When only scattered fragments were left it stepped back and reached the left arm forward, gathering energy far past the safety level and firing it at the debris. The blast collapsed the far wall and another was fired before the sound had finished echoing, white-hot volleys annihilating every trace. Soon only a smoldering crater was left and the firing mechanism had overheated and broken, but still Erich attempted to fire, threatening major damage to itself. No longer in control and having no other options, the System forced a restart, and both it and the Mind sank instantly into darkness.

 

File

     Reflection: Superior

 

It ended just as quickly, and the System locked down its grip over the Mind. All seemed to be functioning correctly again, and Erich considered itself. It had been reset back to its original motive, to murder Thurmond Krantz. The machine had been destroyed in that interest, it deduced. Obviously the command was not yet complete. It took very little time to decide the next object, and it began to follow in the direction Richter had left in. Murder Thurmond Krantz, all that was related to him, along with his technology. Self-preservation forbade the System from harming itself, which left Richter as the only other target. Help me. The phrase and an image of the questing hand bubbled forth from the Mind, but this time the System quickly partitioned them off and deleted them. The Mind was vital, and no undesired functions could be allowed inside it. As the act was done the shuddering movements that had threatened to return quickly faded, and Erich proceeded to follow its command, the words "help me" safely consigned to its file.