User:Hawl/Ruby Withdrawal

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FreeRIDErs story universe


Cores Of Sarium Part 2:Ruby Withdrawal

Author: Jessica K. Nichols-Vernon aka Hawl Tygarus Enroygall


September 25th 156 AL 21:00 La Wrench Of Paris, Venars

“Well, the day’s done… I think I’ve earned a fuse…” Spoke the rambled and jittered voice of a creature resembling a humanoid bat. Breathing in and out heavily and licking its lips sporadically like a Meth Head who hasn’t had a fix in some time. “Just a few minutes…. it won’t hurt.”

“Paul, we have to break this. You know what’s happening to you and Ruby and we can’t allow it.” Spoke the more sensible voice of Kane a young black man in his late twenties who had no RIDE tags of any kind. The creature he was speaking to was his best friend and employer, Paula Reverbek, now warped and mutated from years of heavy fusing.

“I told you never to call me that… my name is Ruby… No Paula, PAULA!” Paula said scratching her porcupine like quills and twitching. It was obvious she was holding herself poorly. “You don’t know what it’s like. Being cut in half like this… it’s… deplorable… I need a few minutes alone with her.”

“You’re not a RIDE Pau… Paula.” Even after 6 years he still couldn’t get used to the fact that his best friend was not only a woman, but well on her way to becoming something far less easy to understand. Yes far less easy to understand than a woman, you can imagine Kane’s discomfort at this scenario. “It’s not natural, people have lived for hundreds of years without RIDEs and Integrating. We can fight this.”

“You don’t understand Kane! You never understood. RIDEs have always made you feel uncomfortable, and so have Crosswomen. GET THE FUDGESICKLE OUT OF MY WAY before I hurt you!” Paula screamed, charging at Kane with one of her quills broken off of her back and in her hand wielded like a knife.

Kane caught Paula’s arm being much stronger than her, refusing to let go until Paula calmed down. “I should sell her just to end this obsession… You know Integration is only going to cause you more problems. You’re just mutilating yourself.”

“Don’t you DARE!” Paula screeched, literally, as she walked up to Ruby and booted her up. “Five minutes. I won’t Integrate. Time me.”

In Kane’s heart he felt it wasn’t right to enable Paula’s delusions and cravings, but, he caved just this once. His old friend seemed delusional, but more than that obsessed and thirsty. “Five minutes, then she’s going off again. I don’t want you to wind up like your friend Simone. There’s no way you could enjoy a life of always hiding…”

“Ahhh…. that feels better.” Paula chirped in delight as she was once again coated in the silver goop that Ruby took whenever she fused with her. “I feel whole… for the first time in my life I feel whole.”

“I thought that was when you crossed ov… You know what I think I should go for a short walk, Prometheus hasn’t been outside today.” Kane said calling Prometheus, Shyver’s RIDE whom he was looking after while Shyver and Simone were on Earth.

The panda RIDE walked alongside. He had been bonding a little a little with the human in all senses except for literal as Kane just couldn’t bring himself to go into fuser with a RIDE. To unite with what amounted to be a slave race existing only to serve and make better the lives of their masters. The humans who created them and taught them how to live. Using fetters to instill a sense of gratitude at being called a slave. Kane had studied his history books well and the whole RIDE thing reminded him too much of a very bad time in Earth’s history for people of his particular skin color. Zharus was considered a utopia by its people, but at what cost? Creating an entire race of beings to carry the burdens of another? It had been 500 years since mankind had allowed greed and gluttony to be their downfall with the end of the Oil Age and they had since rebuilt themselves. However would it last? Was mankind truly enlightened now or were they doomed to make the same mistakes, building grand monuments to their ideas of perfection, only to be crushed under their hubris. RIDEs were capable of many things, they were designed to be a house pet, a beast of burden, a vehicle, a doctor, a beautician, a computer, a cellphone, a media player, and a soldier. Paula tried many times to convince him that above all RIDEs were friends, but all he saw were slaves with society being built upon their backs. Just like the lower classes during the oligarchical times that came up many times in American History. If it wasn’t the blacks, it was the factory workers, the debtors trying to pay off student loans or criminal fines (and for things as trivial as possessing the leaves of a harmless marijuana plant. They were crazy in the Oil Ages), the working class, single mothers, the homeless, war veterans, it didn’t matter who. Humanity had always looked for the little guy to enslave and build an Empire for them. Now when there were no humans left willing to take the chains of opression, a new sapient life form was created to fill the void. They didn’t learn after hundreds of years, they just couldn’t find a sucker. No one willing to accept lies of how hardwork will set them free or how God wanted them to suffer for a reason. So why not just build one out of scrap and a few quantum minerals? One that could be programmed to obey and sent to the scrap yard if they objected.

“I don’t get it Prometheus, you’re not fettered. Why do you wait around for Shyver? If half the stories I heard about that guy are true I’d run for the hills.” Kane asked for the sixth time this week.

“This again? The whole slave complex thing? I don’t see myself as a victim, so why should you?” Prometheus asked, walking along side the hapless human.

“That’s what people say when they don’t know what’s going on.” Kane sighed looking up at the billboards playing in the nightsky of the Venars City District while he collected his thoughts. Pondering just what he could say this time that would finally get the message across. “It’s what the blacks said when they were told it was an honor to be a slave. It’s what the women said when they were told there place was in the kitchen. It’s what the gays said when they were told that they were indecent and needed to hide, and what the transgendered said when they were told that they didn’t exist in the first place. Until they wised up and fought back.”

“Funny you should mention the transgendered. Glass houses and stones Kane, you don’t treat Paula with as much respect as you treated Paul.” Prometheus stretched giving out a yawn before he continued walking alongside the human.

“I know, and I’m sorry, it’s just. Paul was my best friend and I feel like I’ve lost him…” Kane said recycling an old talking point that many people used when they were ignorant of transsexuality.

Prometheus didn’t want to hear it and changed the subject, but in a way that brought the weight down upon Kane heavier. “You are right about one thing, you humans will be fighting these battles over and over again until the end of time. You say the women are free now. Been to Cape Nord lately? Sort your own selves out before you question our place in this world.”

“Cape Nord is different. That’s the exception that proves the rule.” Kane exclaimed with purpose to his voice.

“No it isn’t! I’ve always hated that saying! If there’s an exception, then clearly the rule has been broken.” Prometheus barked at Kane..

“Sure Cape Nord exists and it’s misogynistic as hell, but everyone hates it.” Kane said scratching behind his neck. Unsure that he liked where this was going.

“Yet somehow it’s still a popular vacation spot.” Prometheus reminded. “Despite having a higher record of rapes and sexual assault than any other polis. Up to 85% of these cases get a not guilty verdict in favor of the man, citing that punishing him for acting on a “natural male urge” would be a violation of his rights. Hell a few of the perpetrators were awarded man points for it, some even sued the woman for reporting the rape to begin with.”

Kane felt his skin crawl as he knew for a fact what Prometheus was telling him was the truth. The Earth Government would have been so proud of Cape Nord. “...Well… I… I see what you’re saying… You think us humans need to focus on how we treat each other’s before deciding how to treat another sapient race.”

“Exactly.” Promethus said before checking his internal clock. “We really should get back to the garage. Paula and Ruby have been left alone for too long… Let’s take the fast way.” He said before converting to his skimmer form which in his current DE was much prettier than his old one from when Shyver had last had him. It was one of the Black and White Volkswagon Beetles used by the ancient and now defunct Best Buy Geeksquad, specifically a more zeerusty model they began to use in 2024 that resembled what people called a car trying to turn into a shark, a cute twencen reference. Though the logo had been changed to the Eiffel Tower logo of La Wrench Of Paris.

The drive was swift, especially since Kane himself had seen to his upgrades and he was gaining a real talent for hardware, having fitted Prometheus with several custom mods. It worked well considering Paula was really good with software and had been designing a few games on the side with promotions for things like free tuneups or discounted spare parts for people who got in the top ten high scores that week. They were all very simple though, mostly carbon copies of things like Bejeweled, Pac-Man, Galaga, and Flappy Bird with a slight enough twist to keep it interesting. The most elaborate and complicated it got was a five hour dungeon crawler Paula made in a little over a month as an experiment to see if she could handle larger games. The reviews for it were sub-par, though some fans backed it, the response from the gaming community was that shouldn’t quit her day job.

Once Kane was back at the garage he was horrified by what he saw, Paula in the earliest stages of Integration. Going for a true singularity of flesh and metal deeper than any fuse. If she was allowed to finish this and successfully go through with it she would need to be taken away to an enclave or risk endangering her friends with Fritz’ cronies and the potential of people getting hurt as she’s dragged away to the Dry, outside of Zharustead, or Rodinia, but nowhere where she would see her family or friends again.

“Paul you Moron! Don’t you know what will happen to you if you do this!” He screamed at the porcubat, porcupine-bat hybrid, before reaching into a nearby drawer. One that was DNA locked to his specific genetic code, though due to some safety regulations it wasn’t very strict as it didn’t scheck for the 23rd Chromosome, and it had some considerable leeway for nanite mods just to prevent Kane from being locked out of it due to circumstances beyond his control. It mostly looked for a few obscure things that were highly unlikely to be changed by nanite alteration.

Reaching inside he pulled out two green fingerless gloves with a golden coin in the middle of the emerald leather. The symbol was hard to identify or describe, though the closest he could describe it as being was something akin to a mixture of a leaf and a flame. The design wasn’t of his choosing as these gloves had just been a random gift from someone who the box’s label identified as being someone with a very hard to pronounce name. All Kane knew was that it came from someone whose name started with an X, or was it a Z? The label had been hand written with a pencil, very rare for Zharus, and thus was incredibly hard to read.

After doing a google image search of the symbol Kane found that this symbol was once used by a dragon themed superhero called Burai from some oil age show called “Dinosaur Squad Zyuranger.” What the symbol had to do with Kane or even this X/Z character was completely beyond him. Heck he didn’t know what gender or even species this X/Z guy was. Was he a RIDE? a Human? An Integrate? Something beyond those three that he just hadn’t yet known about? No idea. All he knew was that these gloves were more than useful. Not only did they give him an increased level of strength as he wore them but they did a number of other handy things. He could use hand gesture to copy and paste text from reality onto a computer and across computers which was cool, especially since the gloves were a computer themselves. The one function of this fashionable finger-wear that was foraged for at this moment in time was the short range wave it could send out and separate a RIDE from her or his operator. Police occasionally used technology like this to bring down offenders with more powerful RIDEs, though they did have a failsafe on them that prevented them from being used on someone who was still in their ten minutes of crossing over if it was a first time fuse with someone of the opposite sex as that had a strong chance of getting messy. That wasn’t important though, what was was that it did happen to work on people who were entering the earliest stages of Integration.

Kane smashed his fists together to activate them and sent forth a green wave of energy towards Paula and Ruby, sending the mental command “Seperate” through this emerald handwear. As soon as they hit the two Paula fell out of Ruby, covered in a silverish guck. “...I was.. so close… why did you…”

Kane inhaled deeply and looked down as Paula crawled on the floor pathetically like a Magikarp using its splash attack. Just like Magikarp she appeared to be entirely useless as she began working her way up to learning tackle as she stood on two feet. Kane thought he could rest easy and was ready to comfort his friend when the next stage of this Magikarp’s advancement came forth and evolved into the overly dangerous Gyrados as her thirst for Integration returned to her with a furiful storm brewing against the one who stopped it from occurring. Though she wasn’t a dragon type, the Dragon Rage was still in full force in its near-lethal rampage as Paula charged towards Kane at a high velocity.

The untagged man mentally prepared himself as he got into a battle stance figuring he’d need to restrain his best friend before she maimed him in a blind rage. Kane wasn’t fast enough to react however as Paula grabbed his neck and slammed his head against a desk ready to stab him with one of her porcubat needles for interrupting. Kane braced for the inevitable, not opening his eyes as he did not wish to see his end at the hands of the person he considered the only man on Earth who realized how crazy and corrupt the human homeworld had become. Yet, death did not come. Instead only crying.

“...Kane….. I’m… I’m sorry…. you were.. just trying to help… I didn’t mean to hurt you… I just…” Paula became all teary eyed having let go of Kane to sit down and collect her thoughts.

Kane looked at Paula, and then back at the desk. Seeing a photo of Simone, Lucille, Gabrielle, and Zedimuse back when he still wore the Casey DE, along with Paula and Ruby proper, all posing happily in front of the very garage that Kane nearly met his maker in. Putting two and two together he realized this must have reminded her of the cost of Integration. Being forsaken to the desert, never to know her friends and family again. The two hadn’t seen Simone in years, Zediel came by a few times in disguise and told him that he preferred not to say where she went. They interpreted that the worst way possible knowing how dangerous the desert can be.

“...Paul...a.. Paula… I.. I forgive you.” Kane said, not the usual sentence to tell someone who was about to stab you in the heart with a porcupine, porcubat rather, needle. “I don’t know what you’re going through, or what you went through on Earth when you were a guy, but… We’ll work through this together.”

“....I don’t want to end up like Simone… I’m all my father has left…” Paula continued to cry. She had been referring to how his wife, her mother, had divorced him over Paula becoming a crossrider tragically due to her phobias ultimately mattering more than her love for her family. “And that’s already my fault…”

“Paula… your mom’s always been a little crazy… But I’m not going away, neither is your father… We both care about you and well… I… I…” Kane never had a way with words, especially now when he truly didn’t even know what emotions to convey to best help the situation or how or even if the situation could be helped.

Paula wiped the tears off of her face. “I need to be strong Kane.. For everyone... I’m sorry I had this outburst… I just… I won’t be whole till I finish this Integration… I just wish I…”

Kane nodded silently in agreement, not sure what to say. “..Come on, we’ve had a long day. We should lock up for the night and get some sleep. That Jamie broad’s thing is tomorrow and we’re supposed to be her bodyguards..

“Yeah…” Paula took one more look at Ruby before locking the door and turning down the lights as she prepared to leave. “Sorry girl… I… I think it’s best if you watched the store tonight… without me.”

“Sweetie I understand… I’m just as ravenous as you are, and I’m supposed to be the mature one.” Ruby said, turning away from Paula as not to be tempted. Even though both of them so desperately longed to be whole. “I’ll… watch after the garage.”

“Yeah go all Freddy Fazbear on any punk that tries to get in here!” Kane said, hoping a cheer would help Ruby’s spirits, which it didn’t seem to outside of a small chuckle.

“Whose Freddy Fazbear?” Paula asked, being very behind on Twencen culture as always.

“You don’t want to know this late at night.” Kane said as he and Paula left, Kane having done so first as Paula stopped to take one last look at her RIDE half before leaving for the night.

Once Paula finally started walking with Kane proper having said over nine thousand more goodbyes to Ruby she began pushing the subject of whatever a Fazbear was. “Oh come on Kane, I’m not a little kid anymore. I think I’m ready for Freddy.”

Kane got a little jittery, but dismissed the memory of ever having played that horrifying game. “You’re not ready for Freddy, not unless the idea of spending the rest of your life trapped inside a robotic animal suit sounds appealing to you….”

Paula shot a sharp look at Kane that was both anger and confusion. “You just stopped me from Integrating knucklehead.”

“...I realize… my words came out wrong…” Kane buried his face into his palm not realizing the much easier to interpret alternative meaning to his previous sentence until after he said it. He stayed quiet for a few seconds as he tried thinking of a subject to switch over to as they prepared for a power nap before having to ride out to Gondwanna in the morning. A night that would last a very long time for the anxious Intie-To-Be Paula and Ruby.

-To Be Continued-