First Steps (Cale)

Q7 only half notices all of the new arrivals as Serana charges right at her, giving in to the taunts just as planned. Swinging the stand, Q7 knocks the fist coming at her off track, stepping into Serana's reach as her chest opens up, tearing her skin to reveal a crystal, which was where her right hand was waiting, instantly grabbing it and pulling it free. Q7's left hand grabs Serana's shoulder, locking her in place while Q7 jams the crystal as far into Serana's chest as she could. Taking another step forward, Q7 brings her face right beside Serana's ear, whispering to her. "Doctor Rinley sends his regards."

Having timed it perfectly, the crystal hits critical mass right at the end of the sentence, exploding violently, sending Q7 one way, straight through a wall and slamming into a dumpster in the alley and Serana, or whatever was left of her, the other way. Q7 gives herself a moment before attempting to rise, her backup power supply already ticking down. She looks down at her right arm, or lack thereof, seeing as how it was gone completely.

She limps down the alley and then heads down the street, ignoring the stares of the strangers around her. She only stops and looks back once, when the sound of the sirens reaches her, she offhandedly wondered how Cale was doing, then continues on her way, heading directly back to the lap so she can get her repairs.

At the entrance to the lab, she leans against the wall and finds the hidden button, pressing it and having the wall she was leaning against slide away, causing her to fall inward, bouncing down the stairs a little. She staggers back to her feet, using the wall to keep herself steady as she limps down the hall and towards the repair bay, stopping when she realizes she didn't close the door, turning back to do just that when she sees someone standing at the top of the stairs, the shadows hiding who they really are. Q7 stares at the person for a moment, trying to figure out who it is. Finally, after a moment, she let's out a sigh, knowing that whatever happens now, it was because of her error. "If you are here to destroy me, hurry up with it. At the rate I am losing power you will not be able to if you just stand there."

"I did not come to destroy you." Nostro said. He ad followed Q7 from the area where the concert had been. Many things were broken, and many more people were in a panic. There were questions all around as to what happened. Nostro's scans showed massive energy waves, though he was unsure of what happened. He was certain that he saw the point of critical mass, but somehow.... No it could not have been. If that were reached then there would have been no wall for Q7 to fly through. Thankfully Cale's barriers were enough to protect the members of Seraphim...or...most of them rather. Unfortunately the woman Muriel had been caught in the blast and shrapnel from the Auto-Matron had pierced her. The Auto-Matron was nowhere in sight, it looked like she had been utterly erased, and they owed it all to Q7.

"I followed you because I worried. If you do not have enough power...let me offer mine." Nostro said as he reached into his chest and removed the sparking crystalline material from his core and handing it, his eyes sparking in and out, flickering lights. "You will...return my core when you are done, yes?" He asked, his voice dying out, the typical noise of a voice when the batteries die out, going really deep before distorting at the end. Nostro's body went limp and his body froze. Apparently he wanted to temporarily use his own spark to sustain her so she could repair herself...as she herself said, she did not have much time. With this "spark" she would also gain insight, insight of Nostro's adventures, his memories and his time with Cale, though she had access to it all, she remained herself entirely. She was, if she so chose to use his spark, granted a super secret ability! The ability to read Cale's chicken-scratch. Indeed, a skill that only Nostro and Cale themselves knew. She would now part of the elect three whom could read the writing of Cale.

Cale sat there twirling his wrist, looking at the masses while the members of Seraphim passed around the body of the fallen Muriel, all of the, placing a hand on her forehead and whishing her well and honoring her with a memory. As always...Cale said nothing but two simple words. "I'm sorry..." as she passed. This was another life he failed to preserve. This blood...this was on his hands.

Q7 relaxed when she saw that it was Nostro that followed her, instead of Serana or one of her minions instead. However, Nostro instantly pulled out his spark, without even giving her a chance to explain that she doesn't need it. Before returning the spark back to him, Q7 limps up the stairs so she can close the door, hiding the entrance from sight again, then limps back down the stairs to where Nostro is. She gently grabs the spark and places back into his chest. Once he powers back up, she pats his chest, where the spark is.

"You did not give me a chance to explain. My maintenance and repair is handled automatically. I just have to get to my room." That being said, she turns and limps down the hall, stopping at a door. Looking over at Nostro, she motions for him to stop. "Please wait here. I will be done shortly." That being said, Q7 enters the room, closing the door behind her.

As promises, within ten minutes Q7 opened the door again, looking perfectly fine, like nothing had happened to her at all. She wanders around until she finally finds Nostro, who had happened into Doctor Rinley's office. Peeking in, she tilts her head to the side. "So this is where you went. What are you up to?" She steps over to look at the paperwork that he was looking at, seeing that it was some of Rinley's leftover work, coding for something.

As Q7 read over the code, she noticed that it seemed similar to her own, almost exact in some areas. Using what she could, she adjusted her own code, taking a step towards being complete. Once that thought sprung up in her head, she knew what she had just gained, and what else seemed to be missing. That being done, she looks over at Nostro, giving him a small smile. "Let's go back and see how Cale is doing. He was hurt, right? I am sure he is worried about both of us."

She pulls him out of the office and through the entrance to the laboratory, closing the door behind her. Humming gently to herself, Q7 starts towards where the concert was. She managed to make it back rather quickly, stopping outside of the police line and looking for Cale, wondering if he was still inside.

"Here I am." the pink robot said. He simply was examining the area in order to better give himself the feeling of security. Of course he jumped a little when Q7 spoke. She analyzed things while he simply wondered to himself. She had things to automatically repair her? Then she...was more advanced than he was? But that would mean that Cale was not truly the best at what he did? Or perhaps he was working with less resources and more limited time. Nostro would have asked about this place, but Q7 said about going to see Cale, that he must be worried. He was then drug off, back to the scene of the crime, though once they reached there the police held guns up at him. The police called out for him to stand still and not move, and so Nostro complied. There was a reason he were not allowed to leave Cale's "apartment". This was the reason why. Luckily Cale and the others were on their way out when he saw what was going on and intervened where he could. It wasn't exactly easy for him though.


"Wait! Stop!" Cale said, putting a barrier between Nostro and the police, Q7 being covered with Nostro. Seraphim had whispers amongst them as they looked to see Cale talking to the police officers for a moment. He wasn't really sure what to say, but he knew he needed to defend them. Of course this put him in a very, very bad position. No one in the world, besides his mother (that he knew of) was aware of the fact he was nothing more than a human who created robots. No one in Seraphim knew that in his little apartment he had created some of the finest, revolutionary robotic creations. But now...he'd be under watch. No one knew of his connection to Serana, and none knew of his connection to Nostro. Because if they did they would know he wasn't a metahuman, and he'd be homeless, without a job and utterly abandoned. The officer believed him, thankfully and Cale was allowed to talk to the robots, Seraph just eyeing him warily while the remainder of Seraphim mumbled and talked.

"Nostro...I told you not to leave the room while you didn't have your skin on." Cale said, stoic and emotionless. Nostro lowered his head in understanding and in apology. Cale then looked to Q7 and his one eye narrowed, as he was looking at her. So many things he wanted to ask her. The first being who sent her to ruin his life. The next being why. But ultimately he was as he always was... and so he said nothing of the sort. "Glad to see you in one piece." Was all he could say before trudging back to the remaining members of Seraphim. Nostro took a step forward, but Cale's barrier trapped him, kept him from pursuing.

"Cale..." He said, knowing Cale all to well. He could almost feel the emotion that Cale was, he could see that the emotion of guilt weighed heavily on him. There was nothing that Cale could have done to save Muriel. Just as he could do nothing to save his sister. He refused to believe it though, and unfortunately that was something Nostro could not calculate, quantify or understand in the slightest. It was simply Cale. Nostro turned to Q7 and shook his head, crestfallen in his posture as his head hung a little. "Cale is unhappy. I should return home. Will you return home with me, or will you stay here?" He asked prepping his teleportation device.

It wasn't until the cops demanded that they halt that Q7 realized she was still holding onto Nostro, her happiness causing her to forget that she was even dragging him along. Letting him go, she starts to think of a way to get out of trouble, figuring she could claim that he was made by her. Cale, of course, came and saved them before she could even do anything. She gives him a small smile, which rapidly changed into a frown when she realized how mad he was. Q7 did break the rules after all, even if she didn't mean to.

Cale was already walking off before Q7 could even offer any excuses, Cale was off again, moving back to rejoin with his group. She waves off Nostro when he asks if she is coming with him. "No, I think I will stay here. Thank you for the offer." With that, she finds a spot to sit and watch, one that was out of the way. Her spot had some people, but because it wasn't that close to the action, she was basically alone, only a few people standing nearby. She just waits there, wondering when Cale would finish with whatever he was doing and find some time to come over and talk to her. She does give him a wave when she notices him looking in her direction, so that he would know she was still here.

When Cale finally made it over to her, she gives him another smile. "You do not look so good. Do you want to talk about it?" Q7 pats the spot next to her, offering a seat for him to sit down.

Q7 was still around, even when Nostro had left. Cale was upset, and Nostro understood this. Nostro was not a creation he wanted to keep a secret, but rather he was a creation that he worried for, a creation he cherished. Without his pseudo-skin there were just too many things that could go wrong. That's why he had been so stern about this. Nostro knew, but it didn't take the sting away. Q7 managed to pat the space next to her after all of Seraphim had spoken collectively. They decided upon having the funeral pyre back at the Lighthouse, behind a barrier of Cale's to keep the media or any anti-metahuman dick bags from interrupting their ceremony. As they began to clear out and get the body back to prepare it, he looked at Q7, as he was asked if he wanted to talk about it.

   "You almost sound worried." Cale said with a sigh, still standing as he wondered things to himself. Things like wondering why she was still here, and also why he was still alive. Believe it or not...he didn't want to be alive right now. He honestly wanted a bullet in his head. It would have been a mercy killing really. Seeing Muriel dead because of a barrier he failed to get up in time reminded him of the funeral pyre he had to attend for his sister. He closed his eyes and let out a sigh before rubbing his eyes, trying to fend off any form of emotion. It didn't look right for a hard-ass to cry.

  "I should have saved her. That barrier SHOULD have gone up around her." He said through his teeth, a little hiss to them. Never once did he even think to blame Aegis though. Never blamed his robots for anything, it was obviously always human error to him. In times like this it was the bane to his existence. Aegis was overwhelmed, the barriers were indestructible...Aegis herself could only handle so much though. This was, truly, Aegis' shortage...yet Cale took her failure on as his own. "Fuckin' Christ... Serana ya stupid bitch." Cale growled as he walked off to the side a little before kicking the ground a little.

  "Serana...she saw some of my notes and she took them to Nostro to read. He read the parts she asked about and he didn't read the remainder of the notes. So when he read her the note she thought I basically gave up on her and made something new that would make her obsolete. She didn't trust me...and Nostro neglected to mention that the notes were upgrades for her... she was supposed to be my crowning achievement...not a stepping stone....and now I've lost two people to her psychotic antics." Cale groaned as he closed his eyes and recalled all the times he'd encountered her... Bad memories. All of them. "Want to see a funeral? Come one...this is probably the most important thing I could ever teach you..." He said with a sigh as he started to walk away, motioning Q7 to follow him.

Q7 almost frowns at Cale at his words, but then remembers that she had just gained her emotions. With the knowledge that he doesn't know she can actually feel now, and that his words hurt a little, only a little though, since she had muted her emotions, lowered them down so that she would never again be consumed by a single emotion like what happened when Serana destroyed her music. The ability to feel is second to her logical processes.

She just sits and watches him, her head resting on her hand as she waits for him to get through with his thinking, the small smile still on her face. Her eyes just follow him as he moves around, listening without commenting, letting Cale get everything off of his chest. She nods once or twice, to let Cale know she was listening and not thinking about something else, until he motioned her to follow him to the funeral and started to walk away. That's when she drops off of her spot, landing lightly on her feet and catches Cale's sleeve. "Cale, wait, I need to say something before we go."

Q7 turns away from Cale for a second, taking that moment to gather her thoughts before turning and looking Cale in the eye, her mouth turned downwards in a small frown. "The death of your friend was not your fault Cale. The blame falls on me. Now before you say anything, I was the one who decided to leave Doctor Riley's laboratory without first learning more of the world. I was the one who decided to follow you when you offered to teach me. I was the one who liked music and wanted to know more about it. I was the one who blew up Serana, which is what caused your friend to die. Every single one of those things was my decision, something that I thought through and then acted on." She takes a few steps forward and gently taps Cale in the chest with her first.

"You, however, saved a countless number of people from the explosion I caused when I was too...distracted to think logically. That is something a hero does, and that is what you are, right? You need to focus on the positive that your actions have brought forth. I am not saying that you should forget about the negatives, but you should not focus solely on them. For example, where would I be now if you did not stop to help me?" She smiles now, patting Cale's cheek lightly. "I hope that you will think about what I have said. Now let's go to this funeral, we can not have them wait too long, right?"

Q7 steps around Cale and starts to head in the direction he had tried to walk before. About a half of dozen steps down the street she looks back at Cale. "Oh, by the way, of course I am worried, you are like a father to me. What kind of daughter would I be if I was not worried?" Turning back around, she keeps going, humming to herself as she walks, only half wondering how he was going to react to that.

Cale wanted to say something, but no matter what he said he knew Q7 would be insistant on trying to help him. Why? She didn't feel emotions earlier, did she? Was she just now feeling them or understanding them? Was-wait. She's restored? What happened here? Cale was at a total loss, but one thing as for certain. He felt the guilt. The blood was on his hands and nothing Q7 could say was going to change that. It helped to know that he was thought of though. Just knowing that she thought of him and cared enough to say something somehow alleviated some pain. But it changed nothing of his thought process. This was who he was...a failure.

   Cale heard her out and then he heard her call him a father of sorts. So badly his writer wished Cale wasn't as depressed as he was right now so Cale could be perfectly be within character to say "Bitch you look the same age as me!" but sadly Cale was busy being a mopey little bitch. The problem was ultimately resolved by time they reached the front of the lighthouse. Cale had told Q7 that he had one thing that was important for her to learn...and so he intended to teach her.

  The service was small, Seraph was there and Lucifer even teleported in to see Muriel. SO badly Lucifer just wanted to rewrite the fabric of reality to restore their friend to them...but sadly it would not be the right thing to do. No matter how much he wanted to. The design of how they prepared her body in such a short time was almost beautiful. Her skin was as pale as it always had been. A dress made of white roses had been placed on her, her long hair had been braided around her forehead before being allowed to flow down peacefully. The overcast clouds were a somber ambiance to the event. The barriers were invisible, but still unable to be intruded upon. She lay in a beautiful hand carved box, the entire  twenty foot by twenty foot box filled with red rose pedals to contrast her white-rose made dress. By her shoulder blades and reaching out were giant palm leave that had a beautiful array of oddly colored roses attached. From white to a pale, celestial yellow and finally from Cyan to deep blue. Several palm trees together gave it the appearance of angel wings, so large and vast had grown from her shoulders. Honestly, for a dead woman, Muriel looked as stunning as she did in life. A real angel if there ever was one. Haniel, the angel of plants used her botanokinesis to create such a beautiful dress and arrange such a lovely combination.

  "This comes the last part of the ceremony. With this...we lay down the Black Rose. The sign of secrets. The sign of death. We leave this to honor Muriel. With this black rose we show that with her to her grave goes he secret....but when we are finished with this pyre...it will sand a testimony to her perseverance through the darkness of death, as she goes on, and lives on in our memories." The Seraph announced as he lay a black on her abdomen, then folding her hands over it. The fire ignited and burned. The flames danced and Cale watched solemly.

"This is the most important thing I have to teach you about. This thing is Death." Cale said, though elsewhere while he spoke there was something occuring on at the scene of the crime, where Serana had stanged her grand arrival. It's black shoes shined as it moved through the darkness, walking past the police tape. "Death is a slave to man...and to time. It's nothing that humans should fear...but it's something that all humans do."  His words are like the beating of his heart, matching the click of the heels as a stick taps against the ground in a rhythmic fashion.

"Death is the thing all mankind tries to escape...but it's the thing no human can out run." The walking stops as the figure looks over the broken and ruptured stage, looking over the wreckage. "We are not machines. Machines can have parts replaced and you can be preserved... a robot...will never truly die." A hand waves with exaggerated motion, like a wave sliding over the area, and in an instant small molecules of metal begun to reform, like a silver and rising form the debris, metal grains forming and stacking upon one and other systematically.

 "When we die...we don't know what happens. All that we know is that what is left behind is the memory of us... The outline of a mechanical skeleton, battle damaged and worn lunges forward, fighting form it's knees as grains of metal continue to compile and form upon it. "And it's in that memory of us that we know...that so long as we are remembered...we will never truly die." The figure stands, solid yet sleek silver turns to a pale fleshy tone, the woman turns around. There stands the Auto-Matron, looking upon the face of a wandering man.

 "Who are you...what do you want of me?" The man doesn't answer, rather chuckles and takes a step forward.

     The fire before Cale and Q7 is extinguished. There lays ashes where there was once a box. A mighty gust, projected by The Seraph takes the ashes into the air and sends them out to the ocean, leaving behind a large ashen mark upon the ground, yet the cleanest part of the pavement being the outline of Muriel and the angelic like wings. In the center of the outline remains the black rose, but now it glows a purple maroon and a slight song comes from it. "But even memories fade...and even I know that time will see to it that even the memory of me will fade. This is why we cling to life so desperately. Our memories. Our loves and desires. The times we've laughed. Every memory I have is one they likely had as well. Now...they have nothing." The man's step is greeted with missiles protruding from her shoulders as she aims at the man.

  "Take no more steps forward. Tell me what business you want with me!"

  "Q7...One day I'm going to die. I know that one day time will want the same for me that it does everyone else." The figure chuckles again, reaches up and runs his hands through his hair. "It will want..."

"Cale to die."
  "Cale to die."