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If Jihl had to pick two words to describe his life, it would be these: Simple and excruciating.
He woke up. He piloted the Taranis. He tried to figure out what happened while he was unconscious. Invariably, it ended with him getting shoved into the Soul Cannon, either physically or by teleporter. Rinse and repeat.
If he had enough awareness to dream, he would have dreamed of shoving one of the adults into the Soul Cannon, see how they liked it. But the stasis didn't allow for that, so he didn't. On the occasion he got to eat, though, he'd spend whole mealtimes daydreaming about it.
And that was it. That was his life. He expected it to end sooner or later, when the war eventually ended and they had no more use for him. His main life goal, if it could be called that, was to find out about it before it happened and rig the tank to explode with everyone still inside.
...He was starting to get the feeling he'd missed his chance for that, though.
That, or every human on the planet had suddenly turned into an animal person. "What are you?" Okay, that was a dumb question, she was clearly a cat. And the toddler at her feet- that was a toddler, right? He wasn't actually sure how ages worked- was probably some kind of dog. He'd seen them in pictures he probably wasn't supposed to have access to, which was clearly the fault of whoever was using the Taranis for personal data storage.
None of this explained how they'd gotten onto two legs, but it wasn't like he knew how that worked for humans, either.
"A... turkish angora?" He had no idea what either of those words meant. Given how confused she sounded, maybe she didn't know, either. "What are you?"
She didn't know. Maybe that was just because they'd made his replacements animal people for some reason and never told them about him. Maybe the humans were actually gone, and this was just what the world was now. Either way, if he lied through his teeth, maybe he'd be able to leave. Plot revenge if he could find any descendants of those people still alive. Seek graves to desecrate if he couldn't. "I'm..."
...He couldn't think of a plausible lie. What did they expect from him? How much did they know already?
The intercom crackled to life. The dog girl whimpered, taking off her hat and hugging it. Why did she get to have a hat? He didn't get a hat. "This is Jihl... He's a child much like yourselves." He really had been replaced, then. That meant he probably wouldn't be able to leave peacefully. "Before you found him... he was sleeping for a very long time."
"He was... asleep?" The toddler peered into the stasis chamber. "That doesn't look comfy."
"It isn't." It didn't feel like anything, let alone comfort. Whatever that was supposed to feel like. "Still, better that than the Soul Cannon."
The girls flinched. This probably meant they agreed with him.
"Yes... about the Soul Cannon... Jihl is uniquely suited for-"
...Had the catgirl's eyes always been glowing? "We already told you, we're never using it again! What are you, a psychopath!?" She picked up... a crowbar? And hurled it at the intercom, smashing it.
The maintenance team didn't immediately show up to yell at them. Which was weird. Jihl had been screamed at for dropping plates, but they didn't care about the intercom?
What did show up was a trio of other animal people. "Hanna, what happened?" Asked the big, yellow one. "We heard a loud noise, and..."
"You know how the voice is." The catgirl's mouth twisted upwards. "Insisting we push someone we just met into the Soul Cannon."
"...But we aren't even fighting anything!"
They didn't seem to care that much about his presence. Maybe he could hide, wait until the tank stopped, and make a run for it?
The toddler put her hat back on. "Does... does she want all of us to go away?"
"I don't know." The catgirl knelt down and patted her on the head. "But it's not going to matter, because we'll find a better way, with the normal cannons." She said that like they had a choice. Like they wouldn't just be shoved into the chamber at the first opportunity. Unless something had broken the teleportation system...
...No one had shown up in person to punish them yet. Could he break the teleportation system? Without consequences? This was the best day of his life!
...If he ignored that he had no idea what was going on. But that was normal.
"Where did you find him?" Asked the singular dog boy in the group. "I thought we'd explored the Taranis in its entirety."
The dog girl kicked at a piece of sheet metal. "I thought this part of the wall looked funny. And then it broke." They'd welded him in!?
Actually, that didn't surprise him. Of course they welded him in. How else would they get rid of someone they didn't want anymore? It wasn't like their usual disposal method would work on him.
"He was locked behind it." The catgirl turned to him, and he realized that there weren't actually any good places to hide on the Taranis, and if he wanted to stand a chance of escaping, he should have made a run for the elevator at the first opportunity. "She said your name was Jihl. Is that... right?"
He nodded. He'd never been called anything else. Even if changing his name was possible, he'd never be able to think of something to change it to.
"Well, Jihl, my name's Hanna. I'm... how old are you?"
He shrugged. He wasn't actually sure how age worked. "Probably older than you."
"In that case... I'm the second-oldest person on the Taranis." Okay, that made sense... except, for some reason, she'd tied it to him. That was weird.
And given that he was talking to a catgirl, he couldn't take anything for granted. "...You mean besides the adults, right?"
"What adults?"
"Are... are you not experiments?" Why else would they be here? Who in their right mind would volunteer to work on a tank with a Soul Cannon?
Maybe they just weren't in their right minds. Maybe the whole world had gone insane and it was now possible to find people who actually wanted to be there, rather than needing to create them for that purpose.
The toddler blinked at him. "What's an ex-per-i-ment?"
"It's a way of testing things." The dog boy started poking at the sheet metal. Being just metal, it did nothing. "So, Mei, when you tried putting tomato in the cake last week, that was an experiment."
"Oh, I see!" She clapped her hands-paws?- together. "No one's done any ex-per-i-ments with us."
"So why are you here?"
"We found the Taranis in a cave," Explained the thin catboy. "No one was there, so we just took it. A voice on the radio told us to. Apparently you heard it earlier? I liked it better when it wasn't telling us to use the Soul Cannon for everything."
All right. New plan: Find out where the quiet, distorted voice on the intercom that knew what he was came from, and kill that person.
That... probably meant sticking around long enough to figure out what the voice sounded like behind the distortion. And where it could possibly be broadcasting from. Still, if these people weren't going to bother him, there were probably other things he could do.
Starting with breaking that teleportation system.