_Essex_

That decided it for Essex.

"You guys go ahead without me." she murmured with a nod. "I will stay here. Unless there's a way of guaranteeing that I don't go back to the way I used to be just yet...I can't risk going in there."

The little girl nodded a little to herself.

"But...don't be held up by me. You hurry and go. Those of us who don't want to will stay out here...even if it's only me and the Doctor."

------------------------------------

((Also, Soviet, she changed back into a humanoid. <_&lt)

Rosalind's form twitched slightly, and the were-human moaned. She had fought her way back to consciousness after being crazed and berserk watching her husband and best friend perish at the incantations of the Overmagus...a little flesh wound shouldn't be...

"...Get..." she croaked, her eyes uneasily fluttering open, "Yer grimy....Lichy....hands .... offa.... Ggrh..."

Nevertheless, she was in no shape to make requests.

((Sorry Soviet, was waiting on Arashi. D: My only PC there is the unconscious one. T_T))

"Oh dear..." Essex murmured as first her sister, then Alpha and Mr. Bear popped out of teleport nearby, and suddenly zombies were attacking...

She sighed. She was beginning to agree with Acid's statement regarding Mondays.

Hovering up into the air, she floated somewhat back-to-back with the Phantasm, keeping her eye on the group as they fought. Raising a finger, she sped up the flow of Danica's adrenalin with a burst of nanomachines, and Alpha, AJ, and Bear soon found their already heinously good aim augmented by a fortitude boost.

"Call out if you need anything!" her voice called above the crowd.

Essex's eyes widened as Hal appeared, and she quietly edged closer and behind Midas, her vision filled with the green smoke. It was dizzying, and she coughed weakly.

Hallucinogen.

"Hal-chan." she heard herself saying, much to her own surprise.

He is a friend.
"You're...my friend."

Swallowing a little, she fixed her eyes on the boy, narrowed a little in humorous scrutiny. As people began to file into the closet, she looked anxiously up at Midas.

"...Do we...really have to?" she pleaded with the scientist. "...The...me...the other me...is telling me to go...that I'll be more helpful that way. That I'll be better and less of a nuisance. And...I'll know people...and be able to help better."

The girl glanced down. "...I guess I mustn't be selfish."

"I told you it was a terrible idea to dim the power in the medbay, too!" Essex shrieked, nanites flooding out of her hands.

"Oh come on." Solid protested, leaning against the wall next to the reclaimator. "I thought all of RFP was off in the Rogue Isles, besides us. And besides, it's just across the hall from the briefing room - the light from the equipment would have totally screwed up the seance."

"You're lucky the teleporter was hooked to a backup generator and doesn't emit any light!" Essex cried, discarding a spike frantically from the downed form - a boy, just a touch taller than Essex herself, with black, shaggy hair that was messy though it looked as though it had recently been cut. He was wounded dreadfully, spines plunged deeply through his body, though Essex worked diligently to remove them and heal his wounds.

"Poisonous..." she murmured to herself as her fingertips, red with blood, alternately emitted regenerative nanites and cleansing nanoantibodies to rid his system of the poison. Soon, the boy looked better and better, until his wounds were closed and only his clothing was badly torn. He twitched a little.

"Ah, he's waking up..." Essex said, sitting back with a relieved look on her face.

"What. . .?" he groaned, and as his eyes flickered open, green smoke billowed out from seemingly nowhere, obscuring his form. His hair now bright yellow and seemingly much longer, he blinked sheepishly around at his surroundings.

"Hal-chan, I'm so glad you're okay!" Essex cried, nearly tackling him back to the ground again with a hug.

"Agh! Ow. . ." Hallucinogen laughed. "I'm still sore. . ."

"You should be, you had more spikes in you than a porcupine!" Essex fumed worriedly. "It's Schizophrenias again, isn't it? What are you doing fighting him at this hour?"

"He ambushed me, as usual." Hal said, slowly pulling himself back up into a seated position and shaking his head a little to clear his thoughts. "I'll get him, though. . .eventually."

"Well he can't get in here!" Essex crossed her arms defiantly.

"Do you mean you'd turn him away at the door?" Solid finally piped up, pushing his weight off the wall and reslinging his gun over his shoulder. "Because I think if he pulled the little lost kitten act you'd trot him inside for tea without a second thought."

Essex just folded her arms and pouted at that, and Hal laughed a little nervously. "Oh, hey Solid." he said with a nod. "Didn't see you there." Glancing around, Hallucinogen tilted his head slightly in puzzlement. ". . .Why is it so dark in here, anyhow?"

"Essex has a ghost infestation." Solid said in an amused tone of voice. "We were just about to start the sacrifice to appease their neverending thirst for blood."

"What!?" Hal yelled, springing to his feet. "Ghosts!?"

"Solid certainly thinks so..." Essex said, getting to her feet and washing the blood from her hands in the medbay sink. "The reason it's so dark is we're conducting a seance to try to figure out what's going on. Personally, I think it's-"

"-Marvin Gardens." Solid interrupted with a sagely nod. "That's the message the ghost chose to give us."

Hallucinogen was speechless for a moment, and if either of them had been particularly observant they would be able to see a single eyebrow raise inquisitively through the smoke.

"Marvin....Gardens?"

"Solid's using a Monopoly board as a makeshift Ouija board." Essex said with a sigh. "And he turned off all the machines that made any substantial light. Like the medical equipment." she continued with a leer.

"Hey, I wrote letters on the Monopoly board." the grey android protested. "And after all, who needs a sophisticated one-room hospital when they've got a healbot?" Solid said, patting Essex's head in an infuriating manner. "Healplz!"

"Ugh." she muttered with a small twitch. "I'll be back in the briefing room if you need me."

"Uh. . .Wait for me, Essex!" Hal called after, hastening his step to follow her after glancing at Solid. He soon found himself hindered, however, as the large android picked him up by the scruff of his shirt.

"And where do you think you're going?" Solid asked, the single optic on his steel face focusing in and out on Hallucinogen as his limbs pinwheeled a little in midair.

"Uh. . .I'm going with Essex." the illusionist replied cautiously.

"Ah-nu-nu-nu-nu." Solid replied, wagging his finger. "Doc West said specifically that you're not supposed to be here while Essex is alone in the base."

"But you're here, aren't you?" Hal retorted, now resigned to folding his arms angrily as he hung in midair.

"Very true." Solid remarked, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Okay then, fair enough." With that, he dropped Hallucinogen uncerimoniously on the floor, where the young hero promptly tumbled onto his rear end with a grimace.

"You know," Hallucinogen grumbled, "You could learn a lot from Essex about-"

He was interrupted by a piercing shriek that caused a shudder to reflexively shoot up Hal's spine, and even caused Solid to start. The two of them turned as one and sprinted back into the briefing room, Hal's hands glowing with energy that illuminated the area around him with crackling brilliance and Solid's gun at the ready.

What they found rendered them both speechless.

The table had been disturbed, two of the candles knocked over and wax spilling liberally over the surface. The water glass that had been on the Marvin Gardens marker had been set aside, and the red crayon that Solid had used to draw the pentacle was end-up on the table.

It was moving of its own volition.

Designs were scribbled on the board, strange illegible cursive writing. Marvin Gardens was circled multiple times in red. Essex stood, frozen in horror, against the far wall of the room, her eyes wide in fear.

The red crayon continued writing on its own, barely illuminated by the three remaining candles, when a loud pop neatly bisected it in midair, causing the two halves to fall to the table where they rolled for a moment...and then were still.

Solid lowered his gun stoically.

"...Boys and girls..." he muttered, "That ghost just ruined my [censored] Monopoly board. It's time to get serious."

"Stop -fighting-, you guys." Essex said, wringing her hands. "I like all of you, so come on...Let's not kill each other here and now."

At Acid's proclaimation of what he'd been through, Essex gasped, hovering a little into the air, and released a nanite wave into him. "Are you all right sir!?" she fretted, walking alongside him as the group continued. "If you need anything, let me --"

SPLOOSH.

Essex stood there, eyes wide, and blinking, her brand new clothes soaked in goop.

"...Oh no!" she wailed. "Miss Evangeline and I didn't even get a chance to pay for these yet!"

Gah, okay, I've committed some PM genocide.

"Ooookay." Solid said, surveying the collection of bits and pieces in front of him. "This'll have to do, since you can't leave the lab and you won't let me leave you here alone."

Essex nodded, her face in a grim little frown, but her lip quivering. Throughout the afternoon, she and Solid had searched around the laboratory for something, anything that would point to the existance of a ghost, when Solid had begun collecting random items from the rooms. Now they stood at the Repliforce Paragon briefing table, and before them lay the myriad - pieces of salvage, the Monopoly gameboard, the tablecloth, all sorts of things.

"We don't have much time." Solid said, beginning to arrange items on the table. "Ghosts like it best at midnight, right? So we gotta get ready for 'em."

--------------

Fifteen minutes later, the two androids stood in pitch blackness. All the lights had been turned off. The light roar of flame sounded as Solid began lighting candles with the pilot light of his flamethrower attachment.

"This is not going to work..." Essex lamented, watching as Solid set the candles around the table in the shape of a pentagon, and used a red crayon to draw a pentacle between them.

"Well, I don't have any goat's blood handy." Solid muttered, arranging a water glass on top of the Monopoly board, which he had scribbled letters on with a dry-erase marker.

"That's not what I mean!" Essex protested, the tablecloth still draped over her shoulders and the stuffed bunny sitting neatly in the seat next to her. "I mean this whole thing is stupid, and scary, and a bad idea, and-"

"Shush, unbeliever." Solid said, raising a finger. "The internet says this is how you talk to ghosts. Who am I to argue? Now shut up. It's almost time."

A soft beep heralded the arrival of midnight.

"Ghoooooooooosts...." Solid's voice emanated from the steel faceplate, as he leaned forward to illuminate himself in the light of the candles. "Spirits from the great beyooooond! ....We are here to talk to youuuuuuuu.....so.... What's uuuuuuuuuup?"

Essex whimpered quietly, and Solid glanced up at her.

"You talk to 'em." he said. "Ghosts like innocent little girls the best. They're always the ones that find all the corpses, but end up living through the whole movie."

This did nothing to reduce the little android's uneasiness as she bit her lip.

"...Hello?" she squeaked tentatively, her eyes tightly closed.

"No, you're doing it wrong." Solid said, shaking his head. "You're calling them from beyoooond the graaaaaaave!"

"Helloooooooooo?" she repeated despondantly.

Silence.

"Oh yeah, I forgot." Solid said, the grey gunner grabbing Essex's pink-bustered hands. "Put your fingertips on this glass and the ghost will talk to us through the board."

"...Through the board?" Essex echoed uncertainly.

"Yeah, it's cool." Solid said. "They'll spell stuff out with the letters, like, D E A T H. Or maybe D E S T R O Y Y O U R S O U L or something cool like that. Though a simple H E L L O would be-"

"Ssh!!" Essex suddenly interrupted, her voice taking a high-pitched tone of panic. "It's moving!!"

It was true. The glass had twitched slightly...and below both the androids' fingertips, had begun to move.

"You're moving it!" Essex harshly whispered. "Stop it, you're scaring me!"

"I'm not!" Solid muttered back. Finally, the glass stopped moving, and the two hunched closer to look at where it had stopped. "What's it say?"

Essex squinted in the light of the candles. "...'Marvin Gardens.'" she read.

"....The hell?" Solid tilted his head, bewildered. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You're the one trying to conduct a seance with a Monopoly board." Essex muttered.

Just then, a noise from down the hall alerted both the androids to activity in the medbay.

"...Did you hear that!?" Essex had to keep herself from shrieking.

Solid only nodded silently, looming in the candlelight as he stood up. "Come on." he said in a hushed tone, grabbing his gun. "Let's check it out."

The two of them stood near-silently, Essex grabbing up her bunny and creeping behind Solid as he slowly made his way towards the medbay.

"Unnnnnhhhh..." a voice moaned, echoing down the hall eerily.

Essex initiated a vicelike grip on Solid's leg, her eyes wide with panic. Solid, in turn, glanced down at her with a sigh.

"I can't move when you do that." he whispered.

Another mournful moan interrupted them, and Essex drew in a breath sharply with a squeak, skittering around behind Solid and instead taking refuge under his cape.

The grey assault drone inched forward, silently, step by step, until they reached the pitch-dark med-bay. Slowly, he raised the flamethrower pilot light...

...Illuminating a body on the floor, a pool of blood rapidly expanding around its form in the darkness.

Essex blinked as AD hugged her, and smiled a little.

"Ah, hello, sir Darkstorm." she said, her voice a little muffled with the hug. When Hal and Schizo started arguing, she sighed, and trotted over between the two of them, putting her hands out to the sides in a placating gesture.

"You guys...." she protested. "This really isn't the time for this. Shouldn't we be worrying about why we're all here and what's going to happen?"

She gave a cute glare to both Hallucinogen and Schizophrenias - one that most people would know not to have any hard feelings associated with it. Essex crossed her arms.

"I'm telling you, you two had better get along for this thing!" she fake-fumed. "Or I'll get mad!"

Just then, Acid popped in, and Essex glanced over her shoulder, brightening.

"Ah, sir Acid!" she chimed, her train of thought effectively derailed. "Good to see you!"

"Nice to see you too, sir." Essex said to Archlich with a little sigh and a bob of her head.

Turning to Hallucinogen and Pstorm, she relaxed a little with a smile. "Hi Hal-chan. Hi miss Rachel. How are you two? ....Ah...and..."

Standing on her tiptoes, she waved over at the rest of the 'grownups.'

"Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Brawler, Sir Toy, Sir Schizophrenias."

She didn't know the one called 'The Uniter', so she just bobbed her head to him as well.

"Ohhhhhhhhh." the young woman exclaimed. "How adorable!"

Essex shyly peeked at herself in the mirror, turning around. "Do you really think so, Miss Evangeline?"

"Why, yes I do..." the black-haired paralegal cooed. Legs crossed, she was still in her suit from work, but had dropped by to take Essex shopping. "I still cannot believe you have never gone shopping for clothing before. It is very relaxing."

"Well, most of my friends are boys..." Essex fretted as she eyed the cute little outfit in the mirror - a white fuzzy sweater, a long blue pleated skirt and a matching blue scarf. Bending down to adjust her ruffly socks, she sighed. "And my sisters aren't exactly girly girls. They're more....I don't know...'cool.'"

Eva laughed a little at that. "Well, then, we shall be friends and do girly girl things. Does that sound all right?"

"A-are you sure?" Essex asked, brightening. "You're not too busy with your job, and with being Truefeather?"

"Of course not." Evangeline said, patting Essex's head and tying her hair up with a neat little blue headband. "But now you should get ready."

"For what?" Essex asked, puzzled.

The android vanished in a flash of light.

"Oh dear." Evangeline said, turning her distantly serene gaze to the mirror. "Perhaps I should have let her change back first."

----------------------------------------

*POP*

Essex stood, bewildered among those gathered.

She took a look around.

Hal, Schizo, the Burning family, Toy, Archlich...

"Not again..." she sighed, resting her head in her hands.

"So let me get this straight."

Solid leaned against the back wall of the medbay, arms crossed as he looked down at Essex. The little pink android was clinging to him quite tenaciously, and he figured he wouldn't kick her off just yet.

"Last night in your recharge, you saw someone in the room with you, but when Reikoff came in to check on you, they were gone. Then today, something was writing words with Doc West's tools."

"Not just words!" Essex said, looking up at Solid, the tablecloth over her head and around her shoulders like a hood. "My name! ...Well not really my name, but..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Selene, Doc West's daughter whose DNA he used to make you and whose spirit you supposedly embody and whatnot, giving you that adorably infuriating little dual identity that I don't want to deal with."

"Ah...yes."

"Right then. So you know what I think?" Solid tapped a steel finger on the top of Essex's head with a thump.

"Ah...Sir?"

Solid crouched down to come face to face with the little android, resting his large hands on her shoulders. His face was mostly expressionless, due to the single optic and the ventilation grate, but there was still an air of grimness around him.

"Essex." he said, his voice dark and serious. "It sounds to me...like you have a ghost problem on your hands."

"G-ghost!?" Essex squeaked.

"Or a poultergeist." Solid said, straightening up and rubbing his chin in thought. "Though it could also be a demon. Did Doc West build the laboratory on an ancient Native American burial ground? Or have you been doing human sacrifices in the lab behind all our backs?"

Solid would have grinned if he had the capability, pinching Essex's cheeks. "Cutest. Satanist. Ever."

"I'm NOT!" Essex wailed. "What do you mean there's a ghost!? I don't know why there'd be a ghost, and it's completely impossible! Nobody's ever died in here, and I'm not even sure that ghosts exist! There's no scientific evidence of anything besides the electrostatic residue of -"

"You're dating a hallucination and you're worried about the scientific proof of ghosts?" Solid asked incredulously.

"Hal-chan is NOT a hallucination!" Essex wailed, stomping her foot in frustration. "Stop trying to change the subject! This is serious!!"

Solid chuckled, straightening back up. "Listen, Essex." he said. "How about this. I'll stay up with you tonight. After all, I've got nothing else to do. And then we'll see about this ghost stuff."

He leaned down, leering over Essex's head like a large, steel vulture.

"Unless you're scared."

"Thanks for taking care of me for a little while." Essex said, bowing her head to Reikoff as he strapped his weapons on, readying to leave. "I really appreciate the company."

"Not a problem." the commander said, calibrating the teleporter to take him directly to Peregrine Island. "Sorry you didn't get much rest last night, but in retrospect maybe the Hungarian Uprising wasn't the best choice in bedtime stories for little girls."

"I like hearing about stuff." Essex insisted nonspecifically and rather sullenly.

"Heh." Reikoff smirked down at her through his cowl. "Right then. Take care. And if you see anything else scary, you give me a call, okay? I'll keep my comm on."

"Thank you, sir." she said, nodding her head again and giving him a wave. "Do take care!"

The next moment, he waved to her, and then was gone.

Essex waved a moment more, before sighing.

Alone again.

The android skimmed over to the surveillance module, slumping in the seat a little and scanning over the countless monitors with a practiced eye. Dr. West and the rest of the reploids were safe in the Rogue Isles - well, about as safe as one -could- be in the Rogue Isles. The secondary laboratory in Aeon City was small, but it served as a good temporary base for some of West's more covert operations.

Essex was just wondering idley how the mission was going, when a soft noise alerted her audioreceptors to something in the workshop.

"...Hello?" she called out, hesitantly, getting to her feet. "...Excuse me? ....is anyone there?"

The android quietly stepped towards the workshop.

Another noise, a soft clink of metal.

"....Solid?" she called out. "Are you here already?"

Clink, clink.

"I-if you're trying to scare me, it's not working!!" she cried out. "...D-don't be mean!"

Silence.

"....Sir?"

She edged into the room, eyes wide and alert as she inched forward. The workshop was neat and organized as usual, everything clean and in its place. The soft hum of the machinery was the only noise...

...except a single clink that drew Essex's attention to the worktable itself.

The android made a motion similar to that of a person swallowing nervously. She couldn't see over the worktable, her childish body too small to reach it. Hesitantly, she initiated her thrusters, and slowly hovered upward.

What she saw made her overclock for a brief moment in shock.

Some of Dr. West's tools and some components were neatly laid out on the table. As her eyes followed the line of tools, Essex saw that they were arranged in such a way to form letters.

S E L E N F

"...Selenf?" she murmured despondantly.

Before her eyes, a small wrench slid across the table, neatly finishing the F into an E with a quiet clink.

---------------------------------------------

"Lucy, I'm home!" the tall, grey gunner android called out from the teleport bay. Gun slung over his shoulder and a colorful box under his arm, Solid Shot uncerimoniously sauntered down from the telepad, his targeting eye surveying the area inquisitively.

"Ess, you around?" he called out again. "I brought Monopoly so I can kick your little pink-skirted [censored] again. Maybe this time you'll learn the business world isn't supposed to be nice, eh?"

He chuckled to himself, walking further into the base. "C'mon, kid, come out, come out, wherever you a-"

Solid paused, barely able to make out the terrified form of the little android, clinging tightly to her stuffed bunny, hiding in a corner of the medbay under a white tablecloth.

"....Essex?"

Essex paled beyond what the others had considered possible. As she clung to Midas, she shook, her eyes wide.

"No..." she murmured, her gaze suddenly turning stormy. "I...I won't go back." the girl declared.

"...I don't want to be a robot again. I don't care if ...if I'm a monster in this life, an abomination, a crime against humanity that doesn't deserve to live. I can feel things. I can taste, smell, touch...I can experience life."

She looked down, her hand still in Midas'...feeling the warmth of his grip.

"...I've never been able to do that before. I mean, I always have, but...not in my other life. My real life. I know that now...it's a terrible time in the world. I'm frightened, and I'm miserable. But...When I'm frightened, I shake...and when I'm miserable, I cry. And that...that makes me happy. Which is perhaps the strangest thing of all."

Essex bit her lip, shifting her footing. She knew she had probably already said too much, and the others would tease her for being so emotional and dramatic. But...she had to at least say something...before she lost the chance.

"...I know this world isn't the way it should be. And I want it to go back. And that's fine. But until then..."

She raised her eyes to Vern's.

"...Please don't take this away from me."

A sharp yelp cut through the air as the arrow cut through the dog's chest like nothing.

The border collie hit the ground with a hollow thud, her form sliding along the ground with the momentum of the powerful arrow. Almost immediately she shifted back into humanoid form.

A brief flash of fire in her eyes was all that Cortianna could see before Rosalind swooned, the powerful Commander of the Rebellion lying in a pool of her own blood.

She was dangerously close to death.

Rosalind loosened at the appearance of the soldier and sighed. "Good to see you all right." she said. "Okay. Break up in accordance with evacuation plan Phi. No groups larger than four, and four ONLY if necessary."

Wagging the stub that was once her tail, Rosie gave a brisk nod to the soldier, and then rubbed her head. Gods, but she was tired. There was so much to think about...so much to do now. Their base was gone...everything was compromised. Mages would be there almost immediately to greedily glean the remains of the information - luckily, Rosie had briefed the troops on what to do in these sorts of situations.

All those files...lost.

"It's a good thing Little Boy Blue knows everything under the sun." she muttered. "Let's take off. We can't stay here any longer."

With that, the commander was gone, and in her place stood a border collie with a short nub where its tail had been.

---------------------------------------------

When Midas took her hand, Essex hopped off of Vern's back and trotted alongside the man obediently, her head ducked to avoid eye contact with anyone. The scientist could feel her thin, cold hand shaking with barely contained fear, and it was clammy. Her steps were slow, stepping cautiously around the rubble in her bare feet so as not to cut herself on the broken glass and stone.

"The crowd had run out of patience." Reikoff said quietly, in a storyteller's tone unusual for his gruff voice. "Just after the revolutionary's speech, thousands stormed the narrow cobblestone street leading to the radio station, demanding that their desires be broadcast. In response, the secret police sprayed Kalashnikov bullets into the crowd. At that point, we all said, 'That's enough.' And when 100,000 people think that at the same time, it's a revolution."

He paused.

Essex's eyes were dimmed and half closed in her recharge pod, her head ducked in fatigue. She loosely clung to a stuffed bunny - her favorite toy, given to her by a friend from school. Its ears changed color depending on the mood of its holder, and it was now a mellow, deep blue as she 'slept' contentedly. Pushed up on the rabbit's head were a pair of light blue goggles - Seawing's. She had kept them after his destruction and held them dear.

"...The end." he muttered, carefully standing up and hitting the switches that would begin her recharge sequence. With that, he left the room, going back to his task of research.

---

The process of dreaming in sentient beings was quite similar to the defragmentation of a computer. The events of the day, or even the past few weeks, months, or years, needed sometimes to be sorted into the proper storage areas, the appropriate synapses needed to be triggered to get there, and memories were skimmed over once again. This often culminated in a sometimes humorous, sometimes frightening, and sometimes just plain odd phenomenon commonly known as a dream.

Essex's AI underwent essentially an identical procedure when she entered her recharge phase. Data in short-term memory needed to be sorted into the proper areas. Links needed to be updated, associations and things she had learned needed to be written to hard chip. Faces, words, deeds, feelings, sensations - all committed to memory.

In days past, when the S6 unit was hardly ever allowed out of the laboratory, her dreams were never pleasant ones. Always re-experiencing the horrified sense of dread watching her brothers and sisters on remote...The feeling of helplessness, knowing that she could heal them, if only she was there...but being too frightened. And then the frightening images of the huge android standing over her, which she later discovered were images of the past - the distant past, which her soul cried out to her mind to remember. A soccer uniform. Screams and crying. A woman, whose face was erased in her mind, falling to the ground as if in slow motion, long wavy hair billowing like a wave of gold behind her.

But those dreams had long since passed.

Now her thoughts were colorful and happy. All the friends she knew and had made - From school, from the various strange occurrences she seemed to get herself into, from around the city. Toy Dispenser, who had secured himself in her mind as a sort of mentor, whether he knew it or not. The Malta, who Essex looked upon as a child looked upon her uncles. Her friends from school, a veritable spectrum of colorful personalities and quirks, each of whom she loved dearly. Hallucinogen, the recipient of her shy, childish affection. And not least of all, her father and family.

But that night, her dreams were interrupted by a strange feeling of longing. Her thoughts seemed hazy and disconnected, and a lightly sung lullaby seemed to permeate her thoughts.

"Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me why the sky's so blue,
And then I'll tell you, just why I love you.

Because the stars were meant to shine.
Because the ivy was meant to twine,
Because the sky was painted blue,
That's why I love you, what I was meant to do..."

Selene.

Selene.

Se

le

ne....


-------

Three in the morning.

An orange light began to blink to the side of the recharge pod.

ERROR.

ERROR.

Premature termination of recharge sequence initiated.

Essex's eyes lit up again as the android came groggily back online, still only at roughly 70% charge.

And came face to face with something her sensors couldn't even begin to comprehend.

----------

Reikoff nodded to himself in approval. The paper trail was all there. Now if only they could somehow find more information about the mysterious contact who had --

A piercing shriek horribly disrupted his senses, shredding through the hallway in a cacophany of childish terror and desperation.

Reikoff didn't jump, though his hand twitched only slightly once before his rifle was in hand and the paramilitary commander was sprinting down the hallway. His mind raced with possibilities, each one angering him more. It was impossible to infiltrate this laboratory, between its intrinsic defenses and his expertise. Who could have possibly...

Crey?

Nemesis?

He snorted to himself as his mind immediately dismissed the possibility of Freaks or Clockwork.

Maybe Rikti...

As the lights came back up in the recharge bay, Reikoff glanced around cautiously, his weathered eyes wary in their analyzation of the area. Essex was still in her recharge pod, shaking like a leaf with her eyes tightly closed.

The rest of the room was ominously silent, the only noise the soft beeping and trilling of the various machinery.

Nothing.

All scans showed negative.

There was absolutely no sign that anything had been disturbed...except for the shivering little android, who would have quite possibly been sobbing if she had the capability.

Reikoff let his gun drop.

"Christ." he swore, letting out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "D'ja have a bad dream, Essex?"

"No sir..." she piped up from inside the pod, her voice shaking as she cautiously opened her eyes. Upon seeing it was just the commander in the room, she sat up straight, looking around in bewilderment. "There was someone here...Right here, in front of my face."

Reikoff sighed heavily, running a hand over his face. "Essex..." he said, "Your recharge pod is still locked. It's sensitive material as well, so it would at least have fingerprints on it. Or marks. Or something."

"....I think I'm done recharging for the night." she said despondently. "Could you open the pod? I'll probably just power down in the medbay for a while..."

"Fair enough, kiddo." Reikoff obligingly unlocked the pod, allowing Essex to get out, before closing it behind her. She scurried off down the hall, still clinging to her bunny, the commander a few steps behind her.

As he stopped in the doorway, he paused to look back in the room.

"...Scare the [censored] out of me." he muttered before turning the lights off.

Vern felt Essex shiver atop his back, where she was sitting, still riding on the large lizardlike being. Her wide, green eyes were fixed on the red robed mage.

Please don't...

She bit her lip, resisting the reflexive swell of energy that she knew, by now, would cause the butterfly rune on her forehead to glow. Thinking quickly, Essex rubbed her wrist against her forehead as if tired, sweeping her loose, fairy-blonde hair over the mark subtly.

She only hoped it was good enough...

-------------------------------------------------

"Just...a bit....further."

Rosalind growled to Cortianna, limping through the Hallowed Halls. She paused next to the downed Damnwolf, her nose twitching.

"....[censored] strong magic." she said. "Well, Corti, looks like Ol' Skeletor up in Castle Greyskull really pulled out all the stops for us. We better get out of here before something else happens. I don't think I can take another fight like that for a while."

The were-human was regenerating slowly - a downside of all the magical restrictions on the base were that they dampened her own innate magical abilities as well - and that meant her fast healing.

"Once we get out, it's undercover until we rendezvous with the Sector Beta squadron." she said. "Hopefully they won't think too hard about a girl walkin' her dog."

The teleporter hummed to life at exactly 2:00 in the afternoon, not one minute more or less. Malta Tactical Commander Samuel Reikoff stepped into the laboratory of Repliforce Paragon, kicking the dust off his boots and turning down the volume a bit on his radio.

The laboratory was quiet.

Too quiet.

Reikoff shook his head.

"Know you're there, Essex." he called out. "Thought you knew better than to jump out at me. I'm wired to shoot you if you startle me, you know. And Marcus'd get pissed if I had to call him down here on his first day off in two months."

"Awwh..." Essex frumped, peeking between the salvage racks where she'd been hiding. "You always know when I'm planning an ambush."

Skipping out of hiding and giving him a quick hug, the little android smiled up at him. "Essex Blue 4 2 6, reporting for duty!" she chirped with a salute.

Reikoff couldn't help but chuckle. "At ease, Essex Blue." he said. "I thought you were on duty right now. Status of Dr. West and entourage?"

The android looked mortified. "Ah...um....that's right. I'm supposed to be on nav for them...I forgot I was on call." Backing up a little, she scurried off to the navigation/surveillance room she spent so much time in to monitor the position of the other members of Repliforce Paragon.

Shaking his head after her, Reikoff's face turned to a neutral frown. Making sure Essex was all right in the base by herself was not his only purpose for visiting the laboratory.

The TacCom's steps echoed down the metallic hallway, fingers drifting cautiously against the devices mounted on the walls. The switch Dr. West had showed him was somewhere....there! A quick twist of a diode and a door slid open, near-silently, into a dark room.

Illumination.

The room was as it had been left the last time Reikoff had seen it - strewn with papers. His rough jaw was set, however, in the knowledge that the information was now freely his to analyze.

It hadn't been so long ago that he and Essex had stumbled upon this room while West had been stabilizing Marcus and Curtis. The Repliforce had taken a terrible hit that day - a clockwork Paladin, made huge by the integration of several of its own kind into its design, had ruthlessly powered through the handful of Reploids who had been sent to apprehend it. Essex, who had stayed out of melee range and had desperately tried to keep up with the astonishing amount of damage it was capable of, was the last one standing when the Malta command cell made their timely intervention. Reikoff, Curtis, and Marcus had all been injured badly in the conflict, only Alpha One, the Apache Ace, remaining relatively unscathed. The reploids were dreadfully damaged, one even permanently decommissioned - Seawing, one of the marine models and one of Essex's closest brothers.

As West had repaired the others, Reikoff and Essex had stumbled upon this room - full of documents and strange, experimental devices that spoke of blackmail and espionage. Dr. West had been forced into a contract with the KGB for work on a top-secret supersoldier program - part of the reason why the Doctor remained in hiding. After being confronted with the information privately by Reikoff, West agreed to allow him access to all information in regards to the experiments.

And so, it was with an analytical eye that Reikoff surveyed the documents, carefully reading the reports and correspondance. Most of it was written in Russian and needed to be translated - but the blueprints were straightforward enough. A microfilm camera was enough to copy the information for now - the Soviet could translate them at his leisure. West had given permission to take the documents, but such a thing would be difficult outside of Essex's notice. The girl knew very little of the checkered past of her father...

As he continued to explore, Reikoff suddenly noticed a discoloration along the far wall.

"What's this?" he muttered, examining it closely. There was definitely something behind the wall...but...there was no discernable way in, as if it had been perfectly sealed.

"...Odd." the TacCom grunted to himself, eyeing it. His instinct was to immediately investigate...but the soldier hesitated.

Shaking his head, he went back to the documents. Dr. West had been agreeable thus far, and would likely willingly concede information. Besides. There were some doors in a man's life best left closed...

((OOC: All characters are (c) their creators and are used with permission. :3 Feel free to comment, as updates will be rather regular.))

"Boom! Headshot!!"

A foam dart bounced off the back of Burner's helmet. The old assault Reploid sighed laboriously, bending down to pick up the tiny projectile. Burner turned to face the direction the offending dart had come from, and shook his head at the barely visible pair of eyes, sheltered from above by an oversized black duster and below from the crate she was hiding behind.

"Y'all best be careful if you're gonna be playin' Malta while we're gone." he cautioned the hidden Essex as she continued to leer at him over the edge of the crate, carefully lining up another shot with her little foam-dart gun. "Some o' the heroes out there would be mighty quick to send you off to the hospital. Where'd you get that thing, anyway?"

"That's classified." she chirped from behind the crate. "Boom! Headshot!!" Another dart ricocheted playfully off Burner's forehead. He sighed.

"You sure this's a good idea, boss?" he said, turning to Dr. West, who was packing a briefcase. "I mean...c'mon, Malta in th' base. I know Ess's made friends with 'em, an' I like 'em myself, but -"

"I have the utmost trust in Commander Reikoff." Dr. West said simply.

"Guess that answers that." Ginstar said wryly as he packed some extra fuel cells in his left buster. "Hey S6, don't blow up the place while we're gone. If we see a mushroom cloud goin' up all the way from the Rogue Isles, we'll know whose fault it is."

"Alpha's." Essex said indignantly, straightening up and folding her arms atop the crate. "Hey Dr. West, why can't Hal-chan come and keep me company this weekend?"

Dr. West stiffened. Delphi, polishing her katana, snickered. "If you gotta ask, shrimp, then maybe you need to get out more. Talk to Solid, he'll clue you in."

"...Speaking of Solid." West said, glad for the subject change. "I've asked him to check in on you every now and again this weekend as well. With the rest of us out of town, I won't have you leaving the base unattended. Commander Reikoff's able to watch you for one night, but he's a busy man and I won't have him wasting what little leave he has holed up in a base babysitting."

"I'm not a baby!" Essex whined, firing another dart at her father's glasses. With a single quick motion, he snatched it out of its mid-air trajectory and studied it.

"No," he mused, "but you're not a grownup either. You do everything Reikoff and Solid tell you to do, you understand me?"

"Yes sir." Essex grumbled.

"That's my girl." Dr. West walked over to her with a small smile, patting her head and disrupting the angle of her duster. "Remember, I'm counting on you to keep the base safe and to support us. Be sure to get your recharge in. And DON'T let any strangers in the base, okay? I don't care if they're Longbow, it took me weeks to get the red tape taken care of from last time those damned nuisance candy canes came poking their philistine noses into my laboratory-"

"Doc, calm down. Yer gonna blow a gasket." Burner quipped. "We oughtta get goin' anyhow."

"Yes, you're right." West sighed. "Have a good weekend, Essex. Reikoff will be here sometime within the next few hours. Take care."

With that, the scientist and his contigent of Reploids stepped into the teleporter and were gone.

Essex pulled down the cowl from her face, watching the teleporters for any incoming teleports, in case anyone had forgotten anything.

But they never came. She was alone.

A smile lit up her face as she tore down the hallway, her jets humming softly as she skimmed.

O_O

BAD TOUCH!

I...I dunno. ;_;

*fidget*

Essex: Th-though I suppose...that a lot of people would be hurt in a tournament...

Rosalind: HELL YEAH people are getting hurt. They're called my opponents.

Well, it looks like the girls have spoken. <_<

>_____________<

You guys are--

NO NO NO, controlling myself, la la la!

*Visibly RESTRAINS herself from making a perverted comment*

>_______________________<

If he's level 7 on Virtue, I know Hal and myself have toons in the right level range. :3

Rosalind: Up, you! *scoops up unconscious android and dumps over shoulder* <_< I'm takin' this.