Locked in a Cage (with GaiusGermanicusBloodsoak)

Yanaike, as smart as she was, had quickly figured out how the mechanical man worked. It took her maybe only about an hour before she understood most of the technology inside the 'Yanamen', as she now called them. It were some sort of mechanical slaves. They were being controlled somehow, maybe some kind of external device, Yanaike wasn't sure about that part. However, she found a way to control them without the need of this external device: there was a small thingy with buttons inside the Yanaman's head and pressing them gave control to the action they had to do. She set up a small program for a single Yanaman to execute, and when she was done she pressed a button to start it. The next moment the Yanaman walked off in the direction of Reggie's chamber. Yanaike followed him, watching it's movements from a distance. The Yanaman pushed open the door of Reggies room, walked inside of the room, walked past Reggie's bed. Oof! Yanaike must had slightly underestimated the size of Reggie's room. The Yanaman was supposed to stop in front of Reggie's bed. The Yanaman sticked out his hand, and spoke in his mechanical voice: "Goof-day-sit. Can-I-be-of-a-ny-a-su-stance?" Yanaike was quite happy with the result. Even though the Yanaman made some minor mistakes in his spoken languages, which were probably due to Yanaike pressing the wrong button, the test run went pretty well.
 
Reggie had been distracted to say the least, and he had quite the start when he heard the robot speak. "Oh my word! My goodness, I was not expecting this." He now sat up, actually rather amused that the robot was functioning and speaking. "Erm, Yanaike, I assume you had something to do with this?" He said curiously. All in all, he was quite surprised at just how much the automaton seemed to be able to do. "You know, with a few tweaks and experimentation, I think it will only be a short time before we have some robot servants under our employ."
 
But Yanaike didn't really heard what Reggie said. As soon as she'd concluded that her test was a success, she'd already left to the main room to experiment with the Yanamen again. This time she wanted to try something a little bit more complicated. She opened the head of a second Yanaman and started studying what she could do with the various sensors all over the Yanaman's body. What Yanaike forgot was that she still had to fix the engine of the airship, that they were still on the ground and that there was something or someone approaching the ship.
 
Apparently his words had fallen on deaf ears, so Reggie decided to try and get up to see what she was doing. His efforts were met with some success as he was able to hold himself up. Carefully, he walked out into the main room to see what she was doing, which happened to be messing with some of the robots. "So, just what are you trying to accomplish by tinkering with these robots? Eager to make them you're robo-servant?"
 
Yanaike turned around, to see that Reggie had got himself out of bed.
"Robo-servant?" she asked, slightly confused. "No, these men are called 'Yanamen'! As for what I'm doing with them is pretty complicated. What you've seen the previous Yanaman doing was just a simple series of orders I programmed into the Yanaman. However, I want to put them to full use. See all these sensors spread over the Yanaman's body?" she asked, pointing with her tail onto various strange looking things on the outside of the Yanaman. "Those sensors are things able to measure things: measure temperature, measure weight of objects. There are even sensors that represent human eyesight and a human nerve system. Basically, what I want the Yanamen to do, is to act differently based on those measurements." Yanaike giggled for a second, she explained it like it was a very simple thing, however it was a lot more complicated than that. "Now if I just could find where the data collected by the sensors is stored" she mumbled, as she started to dissemble parts of the inner side of the Yanaman. "Here hold this" she said as she pushed a couple of gears in Reggie's hands. "Oh, and hold this" she said as she gave Reggie some more gears and part of the steam burning engine. "A...and this" she gave him a little more gears. She didn't really care for the amount of stuff Reggie was now carrying in its hands.
 
Yana-men, well it was as good a name as any. For simple steam powered metal creations, they sure were sophisticated. Hell, maybe they could spare to sell a couple and make some good money off of them. Wait, what in the world was she doing? Why was she loading all this crap into his hands? "Erm, Yana, hold on a second." Hastily, he set all the stuff down on the floor near him. "So, what exactly do you hope to achieve with these things? I assume you don't want me to just sell some of these, although we could get a fuck-ton of money out of these things."
 
"Money?" Yanaike asked, with a face like Reggie was talking about some kind of bacteria. "Where would you need that for?" Completely uninterested in the subject of 'selling' or 'money', Yanaike continued dismantling the robot. She put some gears in Reggie's hands again. "Hold this!" Somewhere in the middle of the robot, Yanaike found a small metal box, which was connected to a lot of gears. This must be what Yanaike had been looking for. "Here!" she said, enthusiastically, as she opened the box. It was filled with lots of smaller gears, which Yanaike carefully started to study.
 
"Yana, I don't think their going to hold any sort of 'memory' if that's what your looking for. Although I do suppose I could be wrong. These damn things look pretty complicated." Reggie really didn't care much for being her pack mule, but he supposed he couldn't object, as she was the only one who seemed like she knew what she was doing. "Uh, do you actually know what you are doing, or is this all arbitrary?"
 
"No no" Yanaike said. "Not a memory! Although that would be a nice thing to figure out as well..." Yanaike was now hanging upside down in the metal body of the Yanaman. Her tail was the only thing sticking out of it and it was cheerfully wagging around. She closed the metal box, after having carefully studied it. "And to be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing. This is all arbitrary!" She was now busy attaching some things that she had detached before. "Could you hand me over the big gear please?" she asked now.
 
Hm, Yanaike must have been smaller than he thought, as she seemed to have no problem moving about inside the robot. Reggie did as asked and handed her the gear, curious as to whether or not the robot would still work now. Maybe he should tell her that he had the instruction manual to the robots, seeing as how he had taken them straight out of the create...Nah...well, maybe. "You know Yana, these robots did come with a manual. Would you like to see it, or would you rather just did around?" He figured that she would actually prefer to dig around, seeing as how she was curious as all hell.
 
Reggie gave Yanaike a big gear, however it was not the one she meant. Maybe she should have been clearer which big gear she meant. Or maybe she should have labeled them all before she started dismantling the Yanaman in the first place. But ah well, the gear that Reggie gave her would probably be able to do the job as well.
"Robots?" she asked as an answer to Reggie's final remark. "Oh, you must mean the Yanaman! Did they came with a manual?" Yanaike was rather surprised. "You should have told me" she said, slightly irritated. "Give me that manual!"
 
"If I would have told you about the manual, you wouldn't have gotten to have all that fun digging around." he said, somewhat sarcastically. He walked off for a moment before returning with a rather sizable notebook in his hand. "Here, this should tell you what you wanna know." Reggie handed it to her before returning his attention to the robots or "Yanamen" as she apparently had taken to calling them. His curiosity as to what these things could do was growing, and he hoped that Yanaike figured it out soon, as he took it that she wouldn't like it if he just started digging around.
 
Yanaike quickly scanned through the thick manual, only to throw it away.
"Rubbish" she exclaimed. "How coud you give me something so dumb? It's clearly written by a human." Most of the pages were filled with explanaitions of the Yanamen's functions and what buttons you need to press to activate those functions. Howevere there was never an explanation why it did what it did. The manual did not elaborate on the mechanics underneath the metal body, nor how to rebuild a Yanaman, after it had been dismantled.
"Okay" Yanaike said. "Could you give me the steel bar thingy, a couple of smaller gears and the gear that looks like a gear?" She vaguely realised she was giving very cryptic descriptions to Reggie, but there was not really any way to distinguish the different gears. Besides it didn't really matter what gears he would give her anyway, Yanaike would probably find a place where they would fit anyway.
 
Reginald rolled his eyes. "Of course it was written by humans. There's not exactly a lot of little women with tails running around." He shook his head and looked down at the pile of parts. "Steel bar thingy? Okay, right here." he grabbed it, "Smaller gears, uh... right here..." A gear that looks like a gear? That was all of them dammit! "Here" he said as he handed them to her. "We should completely weaponize one of these things, that would be so badass, wouldn't it?" Of course it would, that was a rhetorical question, at least to him it was.
 
"Hmm... If you like so, I guess we can do that?" Yanaike answered at Reggie's proposal of weaponizing the Yanamen. "However for now I need to do some experiments on the subject of sensors with them." Yanaike grabbed the last parts that were not installed and put them back in the Yanamen. She did not notice the three spare parts, that were apparently not necessary anymore?
"Done" she said as she closed of the inner side of the metal man. She pressed a button and the Yanaman was now walking in Reggie's direction, coming closer and closer. However just before the Yanaman would hit Reggie it detected an 'object' was in front of him and the Yanaman stepped backwards. After that it stepped forward again and again detected Reggie at which the Yanaman stepped back again. And in such a way it kept repeating its movements until Reggie would move position.
 
With an arched eyebrow, he watched the robot, somewhat surprised that Yana didn't raise an objection against his idea. Before speaking up again, he took a step to the side and let the "Yanaman" pass. "Well, if we're going to weaponize these things, we're going to have to sell the loot we took from the cargo freighter and sell it. Shouldn't be to hard right? There are places all over that have no problem buying and selling stolen goods, especially since no one knows they were stolen yet."
 
Yanaike watched how the Yanaman passed its 'obstacle', walked to the wall of the airship, which he considered as another 'obstacle' and again the Yanaman started walking back and forth. She was a little bit confused on Reggie's last remark. "Why would you sell stolen goods to buy weapons and not just steal the weapons directly?" she asked. She still don't get how people could be so obsessed over possessions and money.

---

His two large feet were crushing the plants growing at the fertile soil. Slowly Goyops came closer to the two ships stranded in his fields. One of them seemed to have crashed, where as for the other it seemed still operational. Goyops was a large man, slightly higher than 7 feet. He wore green colored shoes, brown baggy pants, a plain white shirt and a green coat over it. His skin tone was black, which was rather odd for this region, the same could be said for his black buzz cut hair style. At the moment he finally reached the airship that seemed still operational. He knocked with his fist against the metal hulk of the airship, knocking so hard that a loud thumping sound could be heard inside.
"I expect the captain outside in sixty seconds" he exclaimed. Where Goyops was usually calm and restful, he was kind of impatient at the moment.

---

"That would be me" Yanaike said to Reggie as she rushed towards the exit of the ship.
"Hi?" she asked, when she met the large and strange looking man outside. "Are you the captain of this ship?" he asked.
 
What Yanaike apparently didn't understand was that stealing weapons was a much more dangerous task then simply buying them, but apparently he didn't have the time to explain it to her, as soon a thumping sound was heard. Of course he would ask for the captain. Hastily walking to the entryway, he looked the man up and down with an arched eyebrow. "I'm the captain of this ship." Reggie stated, completely aware of the fact that this man seemed easily capable of crushing both him and Yanaike should the idea so take him. "Pray tell stranger, what business do you have with the captain of this ship?"
 
Goyops looked to the little girl, claiming to be the leader and than he looked to the old looking man in a long coat, who was also claiming to be the leader. He guessed the old man would be the real leader. But he had to make sure, before they would reproach him for picking the wrong one.
"No jokes, shit!" he said, rather annoyed. "Who of you two is the real leader?"

---

"Me!" Yanaike said, her tail wagging around cheerfully. "I'm the leader of this ship!" She wanted to try how long she could keep this up. She had never been a leader before and she was quite anxious to find out the responsibilities belonging to the term of leader. Besides that, the situation was rather 'complex' and there was not really a leader. Reggie owned the ship, but that didn't automatically make him the leader. And with just two people on the ship, and Yanaike being able to leave any time, there wasn't really actually anything to 'lead' for Reggie. Well, except for the Yanamen of course, but technically Yanaike was leading them more than Reggie was.
 
"What ever, it doesn't fucking matter, she's just playing games. What the hell do you want?" Reggie was getting impatient with Yana's games, and now was not the time for them. "State what you want, we're the only two aboard the ship." If only Yanaike knew the correct time and place for the antics she was pulling, now especially not being a good time, seeing as how there was a giant of a man in front of them that looked like he could crush their skulls with one hand.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back