Restoration: The Rise Of A Paragon

The Future, Seven Years After
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“How’s she coming along, doc?”

“She’s coming.”

“Look at her…she looks so calm, so peaceful at rest despite the fact that she’s gone to Hell and back. She’s looking a whole helluva lot better than she did when we brought her here two days ago!”

“She now at least looks somewhat recognizable as a humanoid and not a mangled piece of scrap metal anymore…yet at the same time morbidly beautiful in her brokenness, somehow.”

“Poor girl’s seen better days, that’s for sure. She was in such bad shape that I wasn’t sure if it was her or not when we found her; that trademark diamond of hers glowing in her chest was the only thing that let me know it was her! I mean…her freakin’ skin was seared clean off of her metal skeleton in places, dude! You’re a miracle worker!”

“Thank the miracle of modern technology. Those new nanomachines that I transfused into her bloodstream regenerated her burnt and heavily scarred organic tissue rather nicely. We just finished reconnecting her lower body to the rest of her torso. The other techs are almost done building her a new right forearm; they had to start from scratch being that her previous one was completely decimated and the casing surrounding the main connections were FUBAR.

Her cybernetic systems just came back online about an hour ago and appear to be running at near-optimal performance. She’s not quite at one-hundred percent unfortunately; I’m not going to be able to completely finish all of her repairs. Quite frankly, I just simply don’t have all of the parts I need here! Some parts either need to be completely replaced or added to her body that weren’t there previously; she’s also got a lot of parts that are incompatible and obsolete with the newer cybernetics that are available and she will need some extensive upgrading. Once she makes it to Daedalus Epsilon, Techna will take her apart again and completely rebuild her with updated hardware and cybernetic components…and give her some hair! The repairs and parts that I’m giving her are just enough to get her there. I’d say she’s at about sixty-five…seventy percent tops.”

“Well, that’s good for now…I guess. Considering that she was damn near dead when we found her. I’m telling you…she wasn’t breathing, her head was barely attached to the rest of her body thanks to a few wires and cables, no pulse, nothing…just a broken charred metal husk lying there buried underneath debris!

I mean, everyone thought that she disintegrated in that megaton blast when Sataria’s old hive exploded and leveled the entire city three years ago…I’m surprised that she wasn’t reduced to a puddle of that liquid-metal stuff that’s bonded to her body, let alone being alive period! Even with that nearly indestructible symbiote of hers, there’s no way that she should’ve survived!

And from that big ol’ ruckus that was happening when our forces attacked the Hive before the explosion, I’m gonna guess that she didn’t get all of her damage from the blast alone either. It’s a good thing that we did eventually decide to survey the ruins of Seraphim Falls…we never would have found her if we didn’t! How was she able to survive lying buried underneath all that rubble deactivated for so long?”

“I know a lot of things Skip, but some things I just can’t explain…this being one of those things. What I don’t understand is that while everything else was nearly destroyed and her systems were inoperable, her brainwaves stayed moderately high thanks to that strange diamond implanted in her chest. I swear that thing must’ve been the only thing keeping her alive!

I disconnected it when we began her repairs and her brainwave activity flatlined until I reconnected it! That thing is putting out some serious joules; that’s for sure. And it seems to be self-replenishing too!”

“How about her vitals for her organic parts? I’m surprised that she even has any left…Sataria really did a number on her when she assimilated her years ago!”

“Steady…they really took a pounding! So much that unfortunately her nanomachines weren’t able to regenerate and heal everything; I did my best to save what I could. We had to replace some of her severely damaged areas with more cybernetic components; obviously I had no choice but replace everything below her sternum because you brought her in here missing the lower half of her body. Plus, as you said, Sataria went in and cleaned house on quite a bit of her organic components and replaced them all with machinery.

As for the organic parts that I was able to save, those nanomachines in her synthetic bloodstream will repair the rest of her damaged organic tissues. If we had the time, a few days rest would put her straight, but unfortunately we don’t have that luxury right now. We’ve gotta get her to Daedalus Epsilon so that we can get her fixed and ready for battle if we are to ever stand a fighting chance against Sataria and the Collective.”

“That’s actually what I’m most concerned about. Are we sure that she’s no longer under their control? I mean…how do we know that she won’t wig out and turn on us when we activate her?”

“Well, now that her brainwaves are responsive I see that there appears to be no traces of the malignant programming left anywhere in her databanks; I was able to sweep the bad programming from her databanks altogether. And what I’m about to say may make you feel a helluva lot better; do you know the story that Commander Athena tells about how she that broke free of the Collective’s programming, fought Sataria, and sacrificed herself by causing the explosion when they went to rescue her?”

“Yeah…but I always thought that maybe she was just exaggerating a bit.”

“Come on man…since when has Athena ever been one to exaggerate anything?!? If it were Deuce, Jinx, or Techna that said it, then I could see how you would say that! But anyways, I ran a retroactive memory scan on her cerebral cortex unit and was able to play back some of her last memories before the explosion and Athena’s story about her is in fact true; I was able to see it on the playback through her own eyes. She and Sataria were in a vicious fight and she purposely threw herself and Sataria in the main reactor core of the Hive, which caused a chain reaction coupled with the nuclear charges that Scarlette Tamzarian provided and ultimately led to the megaton explosion. And you know the rest of the story…she apparently died in the blast as a hero for sacrificing herself, Sataria somehow lived and eventually came back stronger than ever. Until now, of course!

Unfortunately, her memories went back to only as far as the moment when she broke free of Sataria’s programming. Meaning that’s all she remembers other than her basic motor functions, standard operating programming, combat programming, and such. At least we don’t have to teach her how to walk, talk, and use her body all over again! I know that Sataria has a habit of wiping the minds clean of whoever she assimilates and I would imagine that her memory banks will be in shambles due to DFA on top of the brain trauma that she suffered in the explosion.

“DFA…can you dumb that down for me please, Doc? Pardon me for not having a Ph D. in Cyberology, here.”

“Dissociative fugue amnesia. It means that what is left of her organic brain has atrophied for being under the influence of programming being that she hasn’t used it in so long, which is normal after an extended period of time. Think of a car that’s been sitting for a long time without being cranked up and how it won’t crank when you finally try to crank it up...it’s the same thing almost. I’ll bet you five bucks that the poor gal doesn’t remember her own name.”

“You know better than I would and would probably win that bet. So if that’s the case, then how long should it take to get her full memory back?”

“No telling. She was under the influence of some pretty extensive programming; I know technically she’s a cyborg being that she still has some of her original organic body parts, but she was virtually a robot for the past almost five years. And then on top of that add the three years that she was deactivated. There’s no guarantee that she may ever get it back.”

“Damn. Well, let’s hope that nothing’s permanently wrong with her databanks and that she will make a full recovery.”

“At this point, all we can do is hope. At least she’s not ‘dead’ anymore. But I can’t help but wonder…even though we were able to save her; do you think everyone will accept her back? I mean, she is personally responsible for a lot of deaths and assimilations in the name of the Collective.”

“You said you deprogrammed her, right? I don’t think we have a choice but to accept and trust her; we need the firepower that she’s capable of producing! I’ve lost some really good friends to her, but I know that she wasn’t killing or assimilating on her own merit; she was merely Sataria’s puppet. But now that she’s back on our side, she gives us our best fighting chance to take Sataria down once and for all. Sapphira, Athena and her crew, and our militias can only do so much.

Unless Jesus Christ Himself comes down here and saves us from the Collective, we need a savior of some sort...and I believe that she’s it! I’m just glad we were actually able to save her gorgeous dimpled face and have her functioning again…back on our side.”

“Me too, Skip. She gives me hope that we can turn the tide of things. Before we found her, I didn’t have much hope at all. Now, I do.

Okay…here we go. I’m gonna activate her.”
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END...OF THE BEGINNING!!!


Here's the sequel to the story/pic that I provided at the top of my "What If...Nikki had actually been assimilated and became Sataria's herald in the Collective?" story. Playing around some more with the original I've actually got one more alternative version that I'm gonna post too! (I know y'all are getting tired of the same pic reworked over and over...I'll get you some new stuff soon!)

I REALLY LIKE WHERE THIS IS GOING!

I've been brainstorming a lot lately for ways to spice up my characters/stories quite a bit...Just know that MAJOR changes are coming to Nikki's story, and these stories are the basis for them. Also, b/c of the major changes to her story you can expect to see changes in a few of the other gals of mine. (Sapphira fans can breathe a sigh of relief...she's doing fine where she is!) However...you may be saying goodbye to a certain red-headed full bodied cyborg as you've come to know her b/c I'm gonna combine her with Nikki! #Simone

I'm still working out all of the details, but stay tuned!