trans_9 | Tour Guides were never this Cool [Closed]

Okay, so there were people on this ship who wanted to help her. This was a good thing. Splicer was one of them. He wasn't a perv unlike some of them, just with a personality and if he were living in Aya's New York, he'd be in the grey area of the law with all the resources in the world. Perfect.

It was a task enough to try and find Splicer but... she got lost. Oh man. So it was a while before she finally finds him somewhere in this damned ship.

"Help me." she said half sarcastically, half seriously. "It's doing my head in."

He was patient, always had been. Splicer would have waited until it was time for bed, knowing that sometimes, things just came up. Her voice and words however, made him smile and chuckle, looking over his shades with a warm grin.

"Don't mind if I do, and don't worry, you'll get used to it after a bit. So long as you don't run into some of the secrets the ship has." he mused, half true also, the ship had a few incidents that he didn't agree with considering that they were in the dark about every single one of them.

Aya shuddered. She felt like she was living inside the Ultimate Being, inside one of Mitochondria Eve's more fantastic creations. But she took a moment to compose herself and basically got her ass in gear otherwise she'd kick herself. She had to constantly remind herself that Mitochondria Eve was gone. Aya's doing. But that trauma doesn't go away quickly.

"Secrets I can live without." she retorted. "Show me around to the more human parts of the ship."

"That, I can totally do" he said with a big smile as he pushed his shades up his nose and leaned off of the wall.

He offered an arm in case Aya was that kind of gal, but he wouldn't hold it there for long in case she, well, wasn't!

Their first stop, the 'elevator' that took them to the different floors that were accessible in Stacy.

"Here ya go, this is one of the few places that will let you reach all other areas of the ship, at least the one's we can get to and all that. From bottom to top you have Science and Medical wing on Level 1, Pods on Level 2, Armory on Level 3, The City, and my personal favorite on Level 4, frankly it's the closest to anything remotely similar to a planet, and it's where my place and several other's make their homes instead of Level 5 which holds the Living Area and Command Deck. Then Level 6 holds everyone's vehicles in the Hangar."

Right now they were in Level Two and Splicer took a lax bow before offering a hand to his companion with a smile. "Want to head up to the City and check out the places i was talking about?"

No, she wasn't going to take your arm Splicer. She's just going to stare at it and then proceed to walk in the direction of the "elevator." She's not that kind of girl, sorry to disappoint.

"Elevator..." murmured Aya she looked at the omnicomm device in her hand. It pretty much reaffirmed what the other had said. "Okay, got it. Easy enough to remember."

She eyed the hand that was offered to her with suspicion.

"Look Casanova, this is a guided tour. Not a date."

Aya crossed her arms and made a forty five degree turn to the right. She was still a little tense from the podpop and just being on Stacy. The stress of being new was something she hadn't felt since she joined MIST.

"Just... yeah, take me there."

Splicer raised a brow and smirked, raising his hands up in mock surrender and laughed a bit.

"Alright, alright, I wasn't thinking it was, I was jus' tryin' t'be polite and all that jazz. But if you want it straight and to the point, I can totally dig that too."

He moved in position and waited for her, soon on their way to Level Four. Once there, Aya was met with the same sight everyone saw once arriving here. A massive city was an understatement, this place was unlike anything else you would have seen. A massive metropolis of mixed architecture from different worlds, most of it looking abandoned except for a few areas where there was obvious traffic of people who have made their homes there.

"Well, here's the City." he said as if it needed no introduction. "From here we can hit up Hydroponics, the Bathhouse, the Park, Religion Row, The Drunken Dragon, and Hunter's Pad." Amongst all the other places that had been mapped out and those that hadn't been.

He made a motion for her to look at the file under 'City' (http://t9.attention-universe.com/tiki-index.php?page=Level+4) on her comm, the information on it was big.

The sight that greeted Aya completely threw her off guard. Stopping and staring, she looked at... everything. It looked like a city in disrepair, something like a half abandoned New York. There were people and there were monuments and they looked like they'd been lived in. She let out a great big sigh of relief. Aya could get used to this, yes she could. And even though she knew they were still in the ship, Aya could make believe that she wasn't inside the Ultimate Being. And that was probably good for her sanity.

When he motioned for her to look at the file, Aya skimmed through the document with a frown. How did this all fit here? But a name in the file interested her. Two of them, in fact.

"Grand Central Station and Central Park."

Aya turned to Splicer.

"What do you know about those?"

He looked at Aya, then back to the City in the direction of the locations for a few moments.

"Old Earth places right? Pre-twentieth century and all that. Nice places actually. Think one of the Council Members has her home the Station, while Central Park is used often for the most part. Since there's very few natural or green areas in the ship, Central Park, the Park and Hydroponics get visited often by people needing or wanting a place they can relax at."

Splicer being one of those people. He didn't mind hitting up a nap, or chilling back with a drink and his portable rig under a tree or next to the water every now and then. Almost felt like one of his days off.

"Hah, old Earth places... that's one way of putting it."

Places that were loaded with memories for Aya. Aya frowned and lowered her head. Why was she shaking? Was it because that those landmarks were gone? She thought she'd be glad to see the back of them but she was too emotionally invested in them to see them gone of all things.

Splicer raised a brow as he noticed her uneasiness. Being a powerful psion and infiltration specialist, he sometimes had to deal with 'altering' people's emotions, specially when he was acting as a doppleganger. but he didn't want to do that to any of the crew, unless they asked, like one of his friends...

"You alright?" he said in a more calm tone. "We can take a break before continuin' if you'd like. Taking all of this in after everything that happened ain't always easy."

"It's fine."

She took a deep breath and willed her nerves to calm down. It seemed to work after a moment. Straightening up, Aya looked Splicer straight in the eye.

"Look, if I don't tell anyone then it's going to mess with my head."

Another breath and then she continued.

"I figured that not many people on this ship are what you'd call 'normal.' I'm definitely not normal. Sometimes I wish I was a bog standard human being. But no. The time that I found out I wasn't normal was linked to those places. Central Park. New York. It's a lot to try and deal with."

Aya looked at the omnicomm device in her hands and sighed.

"Let's continue."

Splicer nodded and began walking, but this time, he did it backwards, easily able to navigate the place without needing to see thanks to his many 'gifts'. He wanted to give the girl his undivided attention, so he placed his hands in his pockets as he spoke.

"You can tell me anything you need whenever you want to. You're free to visit whenever you want or need to yanno? I know what it's like... On both accounts. Dealing with things and wishing you weren't... you know. Not normal."

He paused for a moment, looking up to the fabricated sky that loomed over the city. "I have my skeletons too. Even so, with everything that I am, I do my best with the 'gifts' I was born with and the ones that, well, were force on me and I do what needs to be done. This ship gave me a chance to do what I wanted to do even if all the damage had already been done, but that doesn't mean I don't want to give my team my all and get them to win this war. You're no exception."

He gave her a reassuring look over his shades before continuing. "If you need time, or want more info, or just someone you can trust, and talk to? You have me, if you want of course. Trust ain't something a lot of people have, and you'll notice that a lot on board the ship. The crew has gone through a lot, in their worlds and here. Sometimes it feels like the ship looks for a particular type. People who have suffered through these kinds of wars or suffering and uses them for this one, whether they wanted to or not. But that's why we gotta stick together and not lose ourselves to all of this."

He was particularly defensive of losing himself considering that it had happened a lot of times before when his protocol overrode his desires.

"You're too kind to someone you've literally just met."

It was a comment, rather than any sort of judgement. This guy kinda reminded her of herself, in an odd way. Every word that he said rang true with her - how many people did she trust? Not many - Kyle, Eve, Daniel, Maeda probably. She had been out of touch with the latter for ages as well.

"But you know what, I'd like to trust people. It's just that circumstances were never too kind to me."

The sky looked really nice. It was like being back home on a good day.

"Okay, tell me about you then. Fair trade - I tell you about me, but you gotta spill first."

He could dig that, especially as a way to build trust in a place like this. Looking towards her, Splicer smiled and raised a brow, smiling a bit.

"So do ya want me to ramble on, or would it be better if you ask me anything, anything at all and I promise I'll give ya an honest answer. No running around the subject and such."

They had reached where "Central Park" was located. It looked exactly like how it did in Aya's memory - vast, imposing and inviting. After the whole mess with Mitochondria Eve she could never go back in the evening but in the light it was fine.

"Ramble on, dear sir. Central Park's pretty big."

Splicer chuckled, and turned to once again walk besides her, lighting up another cigarette with a flame he produced from his fingers since it would be a long rant.

"Guess I should start at the beginning huh. I was like most, if not all Terran children that where gifted... or cursed with having psionic potential, or psionic awakening. Got 'bought' by the Dominion at the age of... seven I think? Something like that. And then 'enrolled' into the Ghost program. Most of the memories of the program are fuzzy if not non-existent since the researchers are supposed to erase our memories of the program upon completion because of secrecy and and the severe nature of the experiments. They didn't want their new and improved assassins to turn against them."

He shrugged as if the thought didn't bother him... at least not any more.

"But," he let out a long puff of smoke before continuing. "As fate would have it, I was one of those with even more potential, specially after achieving much soon after my initiation as a Dominion Ghost. Special qualities in my body and psych that made me compatible with the Dominion's new project, Spectre."

He paused for a moment, frowning a bit and pushing his shades back up. "Project Spectre was top priority secret. No one knew about it due to the... nature of how extreme it was. Most of it's candidates didn't survive... and the ones that did? Let's just say their mind wasn't unscathed. Scarred and messed up for life and whatnot. Skitzos, psychos, paranoia, dementia, megalomania, hell, every damn mental fuck up in the book was a possibility during and after the program if you survived. But if we did? We were the top of the food chain. The best assassins the Dominion had under their command when they were successful."

Splicer paused, just so she had time to process the info before continuing.

Wow, that was a lot to take in. Aya listened carefully as they walked through Central Park. Just... poor guy. It seemed like something out of a sci-fi story: children kidnapped for their potential then used and abused by the government. Aya could relate - but not quite on the same level. She knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of government dickery though. At least she had her mind intact. And so did Splicer, for as much as she could gather.

She let out a whistle as she put her hands on her waist.

"Hm. And then what happened? You seem to be here unscathed."

"Dunno, think it skipped me or whatever." Which wasn't true... he just wasn't aware of it.

"I did know a lot of the ones who were though... It just sucked big time yanno? Specially when there was nothing we could do about it but follow orders. Where else was there in the world for those like us?"

"Hah, well... glad to hear that? I guess." She frowned and looked over at him. "They never think that far, the government."

They had reached a space in Central Park that looked like a massive open air concert arena. Fitting, considering what worth this place held in Aya's memories.

"The same applies here - I could ramble or you can ask whatever you want. This seems like the most appropriate place to do it."

"Same deal then, you seem like you'd be thorough with all the info I could prolly ask anyways. And you wouldn't answer my personal ones either way," he added as joke, obvious grin on his face as he tried playing around before looking to the concert arena.

"Nice place. I've read about old earth, but not in detail. Most of the info give to us was that the UED wanted the Dominion gone and they were the enemy." He paused for a moment then shook his head remembering not everyone was from his timeline.

"UED was the United Earth Directorate. The government that still controls Earth and the sectors involved in it. They're not fond of the Terran Dominion and all that, even if technically they're the one's who sent those people away and opted to 'forget' about them until the Dominion started making itself known."

"But that's for later, right now?" he smiled at her, "S'all bout you."

The joke flew over Aya's head for a moment there. And so did the rest of what he said as she looked solemnly over the grounds. A lot of lives were lost that day. It was horrific. And she had survived, unscathed and awakened to who she really was. Perhaps more than horrific then, if such a thing existed. Because it was so ingrained in her mind, she marvelled at how the other man could look at it with outsiders eyes.

"Okay, so... it started off in the city that Central Park is from. New York. I was twenty five when it happened. The opera at Carnegie Hall on Christmas day. I just saw an ad in the paper and then it just spiralled from there."

Aya took a deep breath.

"Up until then I was just an ordinary cop, doing my job. Everyone around me in that fancy opera house just spontaneously combust as this creature called Mitochondria Eve made the cells in their body just... explode with energy. Except mine. Because I was just like her - I had highly advanced mitochondria too."

"It was six days of hell. Since I was the only one who had a chance against Mitochondria Eve, I had to go in there. Alone, just me, my gun and my body with all these cells. Central Park was one of these places I faced off against Eve. There were people that helped but at the end of the day, I was alone."

"I believed for a time that I was inches away from becoming a monster like her, so to keep my humanity I had to fight her. Resist with every inch of my body. She just couldn't terrorise the world at her whim. So I had to stop her birthing the Ultimate Being. That's why being in the ship freaks me out, you know? It just reminds me of being inside U.B."

"I stopped her, at the end of those six days. It was a long struggle but... it happened. Afterwards I agreed to move out to California to deal with an uprising of these Neo-Mitochondrial Creatures. I was with a Mitochondrial Investigation and Suppression Team. MIST for short. These creatures... man the scientists there were doing experiments and it went wrong. So they were all out in the desert. Or I was meant to believe. They had... they had used my DNA to evolve these beings in the first place. It felt terrible."

She steadied herself by holding onto a convenient railing.

"I stopped it all in the end. Kicked their asses well and truly. I found my sister, Eve as well. They left me to be after that."

The ring on her finger was still there, they gave it back to her. Was Kyle still alive? She hoped he was, but considering that she was all alone, it was a remote possibility.

"I've led a peaceful life since. Sorta. I went back to being a cop. It was a lot better when you didn't have really scary creatures to deal with."

"But yeah, I'm supposed to be 36. I'm not. I might live way longer than I should be. I have lightning fast reflexes and senses. And I have energy that's like magic that can heal and do other neat things. But I always think I'm inches away from being a monster."

Splicer listened, inadvertently tapping into her thoughts and seeing what she was seeing. The entirety of the scenes she was recollecting, the inner struggle, the fights with her own body and the mitochondrial creatures. The abomination that was the Ultimate Being and how it'd be easy to feel as if she was really trapped inside of it just by being inside Stacy.

And this was all on Earth, which bothered him even more. He knew that in his time, Earth had in fact developed enhanced humans and creatures and such, but this was what? Twentieth century? These sort of things he only researched about was seen in films, or games, but Aya went through it ALL. Every single bit as a normal every day human with unexpected enhancements would have. And she never once backed down? He had a new admiration for the girl for sure.

He moved to her side when she seemed to falter somewhat, taking off his jacket and offering to place it on her should she allow him to, he wouldn't have minded if she didn't however, it was a comforting gesture and if she didn't need, it then she didn't need it.

"How old do you think I am?" he said, more as an outward thought than an actual question as he looked at the theater he had just revisited with her for a moment.

"If you're inches away from being a monster, then let me tell you how knee deep in monster juice I really am..."

He took a moment to pause and sigh. "Spectres don't get names. We're expendable. We don't exist. My 'experimental' number was 779... Splicer was my codename... creative considering what they experimented on me. I'm not a full human anymore. My DNA's been merged perfectly with the other two alien DNA that the Terrans knew about... I'm a hybrid, a human, zerg and toss hybrid."

And that was something almost no one on the ship knew...

She let Splicer put his jacket over her, it's not like she minded so much now since they began to make headways in the field that was trust. She nodded her head as if to say thanks and let go of the railing.

Aya was about to answer the question about age, but she stopped as he explained his his hodgepodge origins.

"!"

Ouch. She couldn't help it, but she winced slightly. The wince turned into a sad expression, laden with sympathy.

"That's horrible!" she couldn't help but exclaim, holding the jacket closer to herself. Her expression turned to one of anger now. "You damn well exist, organizations be damned and all of that."

Aya held onto the dogtags on the chain her neck. They were part of the reminder that she was once a number and text on a file.

"Nobody can tell you that you're replaceable or you don't exist. That's for you to decide. And even then, you've already proven that you're an individual."

He smiled, appreciating her words. But she was right, partly. It wasn't until he arrived on this ship that he started taking in on a more individuality... or was it before... when he lost his team? But he hadn't! They were still with him... He shook his thoughts away for a moment and nodded.

"I appreciate that, but that's just how it was for those like me. My team was the same, each with their own codename and number. It wasn't until later that we gave each other nicknames to step out of that rut." What was his? He frowned for a moment, trying to remember... but nothing came out so he simply shrugged it off.

"Sometimes it became harder to keep my individual thoughts due to my specialty and if I was on one of those missions for too long. You see, I'm a doppleganger, an infiltration specialist. I was sent to eliminate a special target and replace them for as long as my superiors needed me to."

To drive his point home, he stepped away from her and gave her a reassuring, warm smile... and then morphed almost instantly into an exact duplicate of Aya, even as he spoke, his voice was exactly like hers.

"What made it perfect was the fact that being a Spectre and a Ghost, I could already read minds... I'm rather adept at it so it made my job easier, steal memories, act like the targets etc." He switched back to his normal form and looked to the 'skies'.

"Whatever was needed of me by my owners."

"Look, it doesn't -"

And the words were stolen right from her mouth as she looked at Splicer, then looked at herself. Aya was looking at herself, an exact copy of herself. Oh jeez. It should be less weird for her, not being a stranger to clones but this was her as she was now.

"I'm not a target to be replaced." she said softly.

But she couldn't help but be curious as she placed a hand to his... her... my shoulder. Gosh this was confusing.

"Have you copied my cell structure too?"

He smiled, now back to his normal self and nodded, "In general I can mimic anything that could develop on any of the three races that make up my DNA structure. If it's human, zerg, or toss, I can morph into. All I need to do is scan with my psionics and it'll make a full map of the person, or thing and allow me to shift."

It was weird to speak about these things with someone new... He can't remember the last time he even spoke about this stuff, years maybe?

"Hah, maybe we're not so different after all."

She brushed some of the hair off of her face and looked at him again, who was back to being himself. A less disconcerting experience now.

"You know, you're a good guy. Keep being yourself for me, 'kay? It's a bit much to ask but there needs to be more like you around."

It was a bit of an enigmatic comment but she looked at her omnicomm again and flicked through The City's data file. If Splicer could see, she was looking up the details for Hunter's Pad.

He took the enigmatic comment and a serious compliment, something about her choosing of words meant something important to him and he gave her a simple nod of the head and a warm smile.

"You can count on that. I'll be doin' my best."

Taking a glance at her omnicomm, he smiled, but allowed her to finish looking through the info, before saying anything.

Tour Guides were never this Cool [Closed]

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