The woman in the green jumpsuit pops out of the shuttle and freezes as she takes in her surroundings.
"OH MY GOD!"
Panda zips around the wreckage, looking for any other signs of life. Her bright red hair streams behind her.
"THIS IS TERRIBLE!"
The red and green blur stops by her companions and she waves her arms around, gesturing at the destruction. "WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE?"
The last battle's curtains will open on stage!The armored girl slowly opened her eyes, green blue orbs shinning briefly as her sequences started to run and she came alive once more. First among her duties was to inspect, evaluate and scan... and so she did the moment her consciousness returned to her. The world formed in front of her eyes... and the armored girl had to take a step back in shock.
H-How long was it since I protected the port? W-Where did this all come from!? She thought, incredibly distressed by the current state of affairs.
Still, she must not panic under any circumstances. She was Avalon, shining guardian of this realm... the gatekeeper that kept all the bad stuff out. If things were like this then it was her responsibility to set it all back in order.
Gulping down her fears, the petite program took hold of her shield and took a few steps forward. She was surrounded by others... most who didn't seem like they dared to set foot outside. She couldn't blame them. She herself didn't want to do it.
"I'm going... please, everyone stay idle for a while. I might need a lot of power for this" The Avalon said, trying to keep her voice steady and hoping nobody would mind much her hogging of resources.
Not at all scared, a huge, leather-clad orc with a massive hammer charged into the destroyed wasteland, with the full force of a 256-bit GPU and a buncha dedicated video memory, completely ignoring the antivirus's advice: After all, he had his own processor cycles and memory, and there was no reason to suspect a faulty PSU.
The ground itself appeared to shift to fit the orc's steps, doors and windows too small for him wavered and widened. Nvork gave a hearty belly laugh: He liked the digital wasteland, it was challenging and engaging. With a small shockwave, he hopped ontop of the ruins of a building... Then he remained silent, watching the creature... Wondering whether to try and kill it.
edited 2nd Dec '11 3:14:33 AM by SavageHeathen
You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.“The motherboard into glitches, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the USER Admin_Lord. And it shall come to pass – That whoever calls on the name of the Admin_Lord Shall be saved.”
"Of course the only time I ever need your help, you glitch and give me cryptic messages." A tall program was shouting at his own wrist. A few other A.I.s were watching him intently. Not because this was out of the ordinary. He always did that. It's just that between the wasteland of corrupted files and a funny old program trying to get in contact with his database(The database is extremely old and as such anyprogram using it needs to stand in a certain exact position), you tend to look at the one that does not give you a fit of suicidal depression.
Winhelp looked at the wasteland. He couldn't fight a virus if his life depended on it. He needed to find an antivirus A.I. And she left to explore the wasteland. Great. Well not much you can do. He ought to follow her.
"I'm taking a walk outside. I won't be gone long" he said to the group. They didn't seem to react to his words other than a few glances. "Oh, you don't have to be worried about me. I'm sure I'll be OK put there by myself" He sighed and started following the directory path to the little petite knight.
edited 2nd Dec '11 10:51:07 AM by handup
Remember, the characters don't know they are computer programs yet.
"Wait!" The black haired girl ran over to the antivirus program and wrapped an arm around hers. She didn't want to be left alone, and she was a Guardian, a protector. She would keep her safe. She blushed mildly and looked around the landscape. It was scary, and the creatures were scarier.
"Ah..."
Avalon was a little surprised at the black haired girl's approach... and more than a little surprised at seeing her link arms with her. She just looked so scared... and still she had come to her side when she asked everyone to stay put "Are you coming with me? Are you sure? It's probably safer in here..."
A boy with messy blue hair pushed some rubble out off of him, shaking his head so as to wake himself up. His skin was snow white, and when he opened his eyes, their bright ruby color seemed to glow, as if the bright cheer behind them were the only light in the desolate world around him. Or so he would have described it. He liked long description. Actually, strike that. He liked words in general. Every word ever. Except the bad ones, though those were the ones he was asked to translate most of the time. Because that was his job. Translating.
The boy, named Babylon, slowly got up, before noticing that he was missing something. A book. A rather large and noticeable book. A bit of scanning the ground revealed to him the book, on the edge of a grid-mesh hole in the floor. He slid on the ground to grab the lexicon, causing a dust cloud of numbers (mostly zeroes), to spray up. He picked himself back up off the ground, and began to examine the rest of his surroundings more clearly.
More grid-mesh. Lots of it. Sand was everywhere, and the zeroes were getting caught in everything. Sand... 砂... rërë... HARENA... 모래... zand... رمل... mchanga... Where was he? Oh, yes. The area around him. A winged hexagon (Alato esagono in Italian), flew by him, screeching some awful, distorted sound. He covered his ears.
He noticed that Win Help, or помощь as he liked to call him, was looking the situation up. That was good. (Bueno... 좋은...) He then looked to Avalon, guardian of their fair city. She was surveying the situation. Also good. A girl was going after her. An orc was taking up quite a bit of resources, which was bad. (Malo... 나쁜...) A woman in a jumpsuit was freaking out about their situation. Also bad.
"Hey, помощь, has anything been found about our... situación?" He asked as he turned to the help program. He liked the help program. He was, well, helpful.
Hey! Read my fanfic: HereConsume
Find
Attack
Next
S37 progressed to Quadrat 128 of 256. The Quadrat related to the Port. S37 did not enjoy this Quadrat, because it was always full of disappointment. S37 was aware it was technically possible that new content could arrive via a Port, and therefore S37 had a chance of increasing his ConstructsAttacked value.
A value that had been steadily dropping and weakening S37 as he started to run out of systems to consume.
A doglike creature, featureless save its eyes, ears, and forked tail, padded into the edge of Quadrat 128. Its triangular ears twitched, then swiveled, sweeping over the wasteland before him.
There was life. Or, presences, in any case. Perhaps simply lines of code he hadn't eliminated.
S37 could not examine the presences further from this distance, so he started walking towards them. There were two programs interacting in a way as to indicate sentience: they were linking grasping appendages. Perhaps more than the brute beasts S37 had been hunting, perhaps a therefore higher increase to ConstructsAttacked?
The armored one looked most dangerous. The one being clutched by the black haired one. Therefore, dealing with it quickly and initially would provide the greatest boon to eliminating the rest of these beings.
S37 made a low tone from its Triangle Channel to get some attention.
edited 2nd Dec '11 9:49:28 PM by Taco
What the... How. Who. Why?! Shift slowly looked around the ruined city. When he started speaking, his voice sounded broken. "What happened here? Where is everyone?" He stepped out of the shuttle, then slowly walked towards one of the ruined buildings. He touches the wall with his hand. Cold, dead stone. Not even a trace of warmth was left. Shift's lower lip started to shake. A tear flowed over his cheek as he sunk towards the ground. His entire body started to tremble and shake before he lett out an inhuman cry. "WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE?!?"
Stuff happens. Post it here so we can laugh at you >=DWhere..
A young man stands up, brushing dust off of himself, and pushing his black hair out of the way of his bright, piercing blue eyes. He dusts off his T-shirt, as he looks around him, seeing but a few other AI. He adopts his usual slight smile and looks around. "Hello everyone. How are you?" He says, flatly. "Looks like everything's gone!" He says next, much more cheerfully. A second after he says this, something appears around him, swirling, lifting off of the ground. Numbers. Dozens, hundreds of constantly changing numbers. "I hope your day has been fine!"
I ship it.Avalon did not lower her guard... at least not yet. Her line of work made her fussy and kind of obstructive. She looked over at the creature that crawled over to her... cute in its own way, but so did so many enemies disguise themselves.
"Alright you... lets scan you over and make sure you're clean" Said Avalon as she proceeded to inspect the program.
How ironic.
No time for risking anything.
A line formed down S37's body, first shining at his snout, then tracing itself down his body towards his tail, ending at the fork at the end. The line started glowing brighter, then brighter.
Then he activated Attack Mode.
S37's halves swung open, then swirled around and imploded, revealing a forest of glowing blue lines. The lines surged up into the air, then came crashing down towards Avalon.
The big red letters on her helmet's visor spelling out THREAT had to be the single most obvious message in her long career as a guardian. She had no time to run away, so sudden was the attack and neither could she prepare one of her own.
Avalon stood behind her shield, activating all her defenses, securing her own identity against tampering and preparing herself to endure the brunt of the attack.
The streams of light rapidly bounced off the shield repeatedly, trying to simply brute force past the security protocols. But then S37 relented and slowed, then floated into the air. He wasn't going to lie to himself, he was definitely not at peak performance. The hunger was consuming.
Instead, the lines hung there, a few feet above the defender. Then they swiveled, stiffened, and shot away, towards another being... a girl.
With black hair. And a pink highlight. And blue eyes.
S37 didn't know what sort of program this was, but he assumed it'd be defenseless; really, who would carry a pair of different antivirus programs at once? It would slow the operations of the rest of the computer to a crawl!

It wasn't like it was cold or anything. But it was still really dark. It could have been cramped. She didn't know how long she was asleep for, but it couldn't have been anymore than a 24-hour cycle, right? The last thing she could remember was...the disaster.
The land was prosperous and colorful. About a thousand A.I. or so lived in that OS, but they didn't know what they really were. Only a handful, not even 15, were left. Today was the day when they would learn the truth and nothing would be the same, ever again.
An incredible bright light rose up around them, and they got their first glimpse of each other, and the world around them. It was scary-looking. Ravaged and destroyed, remnants of buildings were covered by strange desert-like wastelands and bits of cobblestone were chipped away, revealing strange neon grid. It was also so frightening and new. Off in the distance, a large hexagonal creature with six wings flew off, screeching.
She was afraid to step out on the save haven, that resembled a metallic shuttle. Her hair was mostly black and short, with a pink highlight on the bang. Her eyes were blue, and her pupils were shaped like stars. She sat down, kneeling against the inside of the shuttle, considering it a safe haven. She was afraid to leave. She turned to the others with her, waiting for one of them to do something. They would probably be just as afraid and confused as her. She didn't recognize any of them.