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Revenge was all Shelly had been focusing on for years. What else was she supposed to focus on, now that everything she ever had was stripped from her? Her friends, her job, half of her own damn body?! What else remained?
She fiddled with the bolts on her arm, tightening them up again. She had to do some repairs after her arm failed to properly ignite. She designed her new arm with a built-in fire technology, but had yet to get it to properly function. The goal was to keep her arm sturdy while damaging the metal plating on her targets. Alas, all her attempts thus far had failed.
She flexed her fingers once her arm was properly attached, making sure all movement remained. She’d have to get this fire under control if she wanted to take down the robots. They outnumbered her in strength, weight, and size. But she had the advantage of agility and hopefully fire.
She had been plotting a way to properly take the robots down for years at this point, trying to find and exploit their greatest weaknesses. She was thankful for Dr. Caine’s proper charting; she didn’t think she would’ve gotten this far without it.
When searching through the files for the robots, however, she found something weird. She found a secret document, only being found once she fully extracted the data from another file. When opened, the document containing a death certificate. She noticed how the name was censored every time it appeared. Even weirder, the cause of death was declared a heart attack despite the man being perfectly healthy. A police report had been included but provided no answers. All it said was that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to persecute anyone, therefore the case was closed.
She dug further into this mysterious death. She found another file hidden away, this one posing even more questions. Apparently, this mysterious person had worked alongside Dr. Caine, offering Caine a position to code a new powerful robot. But Caine had boasted that he’d designed WPNZ alone...
The duo’s robot had been a resounding success. The activation date was suspiciously close to the date the mysterious man died. In fact, the man died only a week after the activation. After his death, WPNZ was turned over to Dr. Caine’s control. 5 Years after he was activated, he ran away with another recruit, Katana Katphish.
“Selfish bastard.” Shelly’s robotic voice hissed. “You had everything there, but you just had to run away.” The table threatened to crack under her arm’s grip. “Then we bring you back home and you-” Her voice dispersed into static.
Despite her rage, she forced herself to keep digging. Unfortunately, the documents didn’t detail any of WPNZ’s blueprints. Apparently, Dr. Caine had trashed them all in case of a leak.
Pieces began falling together.
Dr. Caine was a shit builder. He never actually built WPNZ, only put in the coding. The mysterious person had brough Caine in, only to be betrayed later. Shelly didn’t believe for a second that they just dropped dead randomly. Knowing Caine, he absolutely did something to them just so he could have complete control over WPNZ. Once WPNZ ran away, he became desperate to get him back since he had no way of making a new robot.
But she still didn’t know why WPNZ acted the way he did! Nothing about these documents gave reason for WPNZ to act so violently. Sure, he was designed for murder, but not for his creators! And what could Puzzles even have against them?! He didn’t even know what Hitman INC. was until he was there!
She shut her laptop in anger, focusing her emotions elsewhere for now. Her research wasn’t helping her at this point. She could try to recalibrate her arm to fix the fire... or perhaps try and fix her voice box to make static less common...
She figured the arm was still the biggest priority. Her voice was more so for vanity at this point whilst her arm had an actual function. She moved over to her toolbox, throwing it open. She grabbed the screwdrivers she needed, tossing them over to her workstation. Unfortunately, she found her scrap metal reserve completely empty.
“How perfect!” She tugged on her hair. “Because NOTHING about this process could EVER be easy!! HAH.”
She hated going out in public. The stares she’d received felt like knives against her skin. She was painfully aware of her current condition; she didn’t need constant reminders from others about it!
She grabbed her backpack, planning to head to a scrapyard instead. The metal found there was free, anyway. She grabbed her keys, locking her apartment door. After she had been fired from Hitman INC., she'd been doing whatever she could just to get by. Currently, she’d been working as a customer service representative. It was easy and she could do the entire process without being seen.
Her apartment was quite gross. Cockroaches could be found in all corners, her lights never worked, the water often looked brown, etc. But it worked for her. Nothing mattered right now. The only thing that would ever matter was the day she would finally be able to avenge her friends.
She still remembered the day she read the list of casualties, breaking down in tears at the discovery of all of her friend’s deaths. Her tears stained those pages just as their faces had stained her soul. There wasn’t a day that went by where she didn’t think about them. Days that they never got to live, people they never got to see, people they’d never fall in love with... You’d think it would make her feel more grateful for what she had, but it didn’t. It made her feel... guilty.
Why did she deserve the life that she was given?
Why didn’t her friends deserve it?
What was so different about them that made Shelly live and they die?
The questions plagued her every day she had survived so far.
“Why me...? Why me? WHY ME?!” She yelled. “I don’t deserve this! THEY DIDN’T DESERVE THIS.” Her voice box fought between static and normal words. Her fists slammed against the side of her head, her metal arm causing her head to bleed.
She continued her way to the scrapyard, using her new eye to detect any usable metal. One of its only new uses was its ability to scan and detect. It could show her things others might miss, such as a weak spot during a fight. She couldn’t wait to try this in practice.
‘Soon.’ She reminded herself. ‘We’re getting there.’
She gathered as much metal as she could before slipping out of the scrapyard, blood still trickling down her head. She had yet to be caught, mostly because she knew where the cameras could and couldn’t see. Another courtesy of her new robotic eye.
As much as she hated her new robotic limbs, she couldn’t deny that they were useful. She hated them because they only existed because of WPNZ. Without that damn fire, without those damn bullets he shot; she’d be fine! BUT NO! He just has to ruin everything about her!
She unlocked her apartment door, slamming it open. Her wall had a large hole from where the doorknob would slam into it. She didn’t know why there wasn’t a doorstopper, but also didn’t care.
She threw the contents of the metal onto her worktable, but she was too tired to work on anything now. A tomorrow problem she decided, flopping down onto her bed. She’d deal with the bleeding tomorrow too. It had probably already clotted by now anyway.
She wrote down today’s progress in her notebook along with filling out any extra information she got on the trio in the back. She had gotten their new address, their phone numbers, and even a list of their closest friends. The weaknesses spot was annoyingly empty sans the words ‘power buttons’, which she didn’t think would be that useful. They were both able to be weakened with tasers, but she doubted that the two she wouldn’t be aiming at would prevent her from firing.
She tossed her notebook on her side table, putting her goggles next to them. She rolled under her blanket, pulling it over her shoulders.
“You’ll pay for what you did to me. Just you wait and see. You have a weakness; I just need to find it.”