Lu and Robles - Bystander

Lucretia and Genevive Robles from Bystander

by

Chapter 1 on Deviant Art Cover Art by :



Other concept art by



Robles by

:thumb167495588:

Public Chapters on Website: [link]
Book on Kindle: [link]
Book in Print: [link]

It has been quite a while since I've seen a pic of Lu wearing red. Heh

Anyway, Lu is the main character of the novel Bystander.

Robles is her body/watch dog hired by Lu's parole officer. She's an ex-spec ops once codenamed "Tlazolteotl" and despite not having Lucretia's level of strength and resilience, is every bit the more effective combatant of the two.

************

“What are we doing here?” Lucretia asked as they pulled up to a blocky building with raised black lettering over the entrance.
Raised lettering that Lu could actually read even in the unstable temperatures outdoors: Seattle Administrative Facility, North American Military Alliance.
“I need to make a point,” Robles said as she let the termite power down and unstrapped her seatbelts. “Come on, Lu.”
Shrugging nonchalantly, Lucretia opened the car door and virtually floated out of it to follow Genevive, pointedly waving aside the garbage stench that was still lingering in the car.
The glare that came out of the mercenary’s face with that action clearly spoke of Robles opinion of where Lucretia stood complaining, even silently, about the stench that she herself brought into the car two nights ago.
The pair walked up to and through the front doors and to the guard station.
Robles handed over her gun, and Lu noted the widened eyes of the salt and pepper security guard that took it.
“We haven’t seen one of these in a long while,” he said, impressed as he put it into lock up. “I thought all of you were discharged after that Pritchard bastard blew the program.”
“We were,” the woman answered. “I’m on private business. Don’t play with the clips, it won’t be pretty.”
“Right,” the guard said, leaving off one of the odd switches he found on the side of the clip and setting it down carefully.
Lu didn’t appear to be listening to the exchange, but Robles knew better than to assume that the young woman, now that she was sober, wasn’t soaking in everything she heard.
It was a short trip to the elevators where they were met by another man in a black suit. He had the sort of non-descript appearance adopted by most government officials whether they were soldiers, police-officers or federal agents.
That anonymity that was supposed to protect them from criminals developing individual grudges.
The man looked toward Lucretia.
“Resource?” he asked quietly.
“Bystander,” Robles said firmly, turning to look at Lu. “And one that needs a wakeup call.”
Lucretia rolled her eyes.
The man nodded.
“You have about an hour, Robles,” he said. “Is that enough time?”
“Should be plenty,” the woman said. “You got what I asked for ready?”
“Yes, all the units are prepped,” he said, he looked toward Lucretia again. “And given her file, I’d say this is overkill.”
“This is more in the nature of a demonstration,” Robles said.
“Ah,” the MIB said. “I see, well, if you’ll enter the elevator, I’ll key in the code to let you down.”
“Good,” Robles said, directing Lu to get into the elevator and followed the disdainful peak in.
As the elevator closed behind them, the man walked back to his terminal and took his seat to watch the camera of the two going down.
“That’s odd,” the man in the position next to him said.
“The thermals?” the first asked. “That’s Lucretia, highest profile peak in the area, she doesn’t register on thermal imaging.”
“No, the elevator is only showing about one hundred thirty pounds in the car,” the other noted.
The first man reached over to look at the weight read out and watched for a bit before shrugging.
“Must be a glitch, get someone in to re-zero it later today,” he said.
The pair of women walked off the elevator and stepped into a something out of an old James Bond movie. There were firing ranges and places for teams to go over scenarios and situations and there was a wide open space framed by thick concrete where eleven humanoid robots leaned against the wall.
“So this is where they make goddesses,” Lucretia said crossing her arms and drawing Robles to look back at her in a bit of disbelief. “Nani? You’re surprised? I read modern history too. NAMA facility, talking about Jerald Pritchard. Point A. Point B. Short distance.”
“Yeah, I suppose we’re not the best kept secret unit in the world any longer,” Robles said as she walked over to the open area with the robots and started looking them over. “But most people still don’t know much about us, pretty much just the people that matter. A lot of us died after Pritchard decided to side with Canada over the continent and take what he knew from NAMA’s black ops and put it to good use.”
“He put Asiaq’s whole file out for Canadian law enforcement and military personnel. Within a day our unit name, tactics and training facilities were out on the wire. Asiaq was KIA trying to get out of Canada, Kuan Yin was KIA mid-op in China.”
“The Cartels targeted most of us assigned domestically, I think I’m still on a list somewhere, but we’d already weakened them sufficiently to survive that. That’s all not counting the various women mis-identified as one of us.”
“And the rest?” Lucretia asked. “Aside from the bunch up North trying to kill Pritchard.”
“Scattered about,” Robles said as she finished looking over one of the robots. “But today’s not about a history lesson.”
Lucretia watched as the currents resting in the automaton’s batteries flowed outward into its limbs and body. The thing stepped out somewhat smoothly, though not to Lucretia’s standards of grace.
“These are class 2 training drone,” Robles said. “It approximates a peak with strength, resilience and speed about equal to what your files say you’re capable of with basic combat skills. The blood packs you can see through the transparent skin approximate damage to internal
organs. Take out the right areas and it shuts down, simulating death or unconsciousness.”
“Yeah, so?” Lucretia asked, shrugging.
“Would you mind fighting it for me?” the older woman asked.
Lucretia blinked and looked at the thing and back to Genevive.
“Nani?” the silver-haired woman asked.
“I think you heard me,” the mercenary said.
“You’re going to let me break this thing,” she said, pointing between Robles and the robot.
The sergeant nodded.
“No complaining?” she asked.
“Yep, go wild,” Robles said moving to the wall. “Just avoid breaking the room.”
“That’s why you told me to dress in something I wouldn’t mind tearing,” Lucretia said with a smirk as she cracked her knuckles.
Robles leaned against the wall as Lucretia moved forward to engage the robot.
Or at least attempt to.
Given what she’d seen when those garbage men attacked her, Robles knew that Lu’s strength was much higher than what the files said she had. However, that wasn’t very apparent at the moment.
The young woman’s attacks were telegraphed by the huge motions she made. She over-committed, forcing herself into predictable paths. Even the simple fighting programs of the drones could mostly avoid her painfully ugly kicks and strikes. The rare times she made contact, most of her force was just wasted or else ended up pushing back into her.
There was one element that didn’t fit with Lucretia’s overall incompetence. She never seemed to lose her balance, which should have meant that she could put all her power into her strikes. She was balanced without being anchored, which was a paradox.
There were several times she thought that the young woman would fall, times she was almost parallel to the ground. And then she’d bounce right back up like the child’s balloon sparring partner.
The fight continued for nine frustrating minutes and a handful of seconds of Lucretia flailing about with ever more frustrated expletives in at least her primary three languages, with a couple more until finally Lucretia got a hold of the thing’s legs somehow and started just brutally smashing the robot into the ground like an angry child with a doll.
“Wow,” Robles said non-pulsed. “That was…something.”
“You can do better?” Lucretia asked, catching her breath and trying to recover her normal composure.
Several small bruises appeared on her face from where her opponent had struck her several times, but they were already healing. The healing was going slow, since they weren’t in sub-zero temperatures at the moment, but it was happening.
The mercenary waved Lucretia over as she started looking toward the other robots. Moving over to the wall and leaving behind the sparking drone in its crater, Lucretia crossed her arms and gave the impression of leaning against the structure, though her back never touched the wall.
“You’re going to fight all ten of them?” Lucretia asked, disbelievingly.
“Yes,” Robles said as she went to each and activated each of them.
She stepped back a few feet and commanded the match to begin, Lucretia looking between her and the robots.
The training drones came at Robles in a near rush and the silver-haired peak started to shift her stance to move in and protect her normal friend.
In comparison to the robots, the mercenary appeared to be moving in slow motion, with movement swirling all around her as the drones attempted to encircle the woman. To an untrained observer like Lucretia, it appeared to be a hopeless match up.
Robles moved in slight fractions of inches, getting into position long before the first of the robots even with their speed. She was there to meet them, and in fractions of a second was through the wall of drones outside their attempted net. Behind the woman one of the drones slammed into the ground head first, neck snapping at impact.
Robles was already turning, her momentum beginning and ending where she needed it, as adverse the drones that were still trying to stop their forward motion. A palm delivered to the abdomen of another drone appeared to do no surface damage, but the blood packs representing internal organs shattered.
The drone continued to make an attempt at fighting as its programming registered that it was “dying”. Next to the flailing of the defeated drone, Robles moved and caught the next robot’s chin, snapping its neck with a slight motion.
Lucretia actually had to struggle to keep her shock off her face. It had barely been two seconds and Robles had already taken three of those things?
The next robot coming straight at her had its knee snapped out from under it, breaking its balance and sending it hurtling downward into Robles knee. The force of the impact eliminated that drone at the same time as throwing it backwards into the path of one of those coming in on Robles’ side, leaving her free to focus and move forward.
The mercenary sidestepped the attack of the next drone and twisted, once again placing all her attackers either blocked by their own forces, or following their own momentum past her position.
Once again, she decimated the drones nearest to her.
And there were only three drones left.
The first two went down swiftly, but Robles took her time on the last.
Lu didn’t so much watch the movements of the last robot, she was more taken by the succession of injuries.
Ribs broken.
Heart and other internal organs shredded.
Spine snapped.
Lucretia knew, personally, what that added up to.
A short painful time to find a cold place.
Followed by three months of therapy and hospitalization.
Less, if she let people in on how she healed in freezing temperatures.
Robles had effectively repeated her vivisection in the space of a few seconds or so.
Dusting her palms and not even having broken a sweat, she walked over to where Lucretia was staring at her with grimace that barely restrained her shock.
“Let’s talk about this in the car,” Robles said, walking back to the elevator.
Lucretia kept her face expressionless as Robles walked toward the elevator.
The silver-haired woman knew vaguely what the thing she fought was capable of, but just wanted a bit more confirmation. She moved to one of the robots in her normal graceful manner and bent down to grip the thing’s arm.
The ex-con squeezed until she could feel the skin start to dent, and then went to grab her
other hand. Pressing down, she felt the soft, smooth skin slowly harden as it compressed in response to the pressure. She continued pressing until she felt a small crack and watched a stream of red slowly flow out, growing thin and colorless soon after it left her body.
Robles was right, these things were about as tough as her right now. Outside, in the cold, however, she would be tougher. But then, she didn’t think how tough her skin could be would matter against the sergeant.
“They’ll pick them up and refit them later, Lu,” Robles said, watching her. “They’re designed to be broken down…well, maybe not so badly as what you did to your drone…”
“Eh, was just curious,” Lucretia said, shaking out her hand as the cracked skin softened from icey-hardness to snowy-softness, and then it was just another bruise on her skin that would heal quickly outside.
It wasn’t long before they were in the termite and driving away from the unassuming building.
“I am not a peak, Lu,” Robles said after a few minutes of driving. “Being a peak doesn’t make you invincible. In that world, you’re a bystander in more ways than one. If you catch attention, you’ll be broken. In that world…in my world, it’s not whether you’re born with beyond human abilities or not that determines who’s strong. It’s how you’re trained. How you stay cool.”
“So I can’t fight,” Lucretia said quietly, her bravado more than a little hollow. “I know better than to try, especially now. I can take care of myself…”
“ …when you’re sober,” Robles said, interrupting Lucretia’s statement.
“You don’t get out of shape with anything else,” Lucretia noted.
“That’s because you make a point of not being obvious,” Robles said. “Though the rumors about you being good luck are starting to get a bit specific, we can deal with that.”
“And you make a big deal out of this stupid fight?” Lucretia asked.
“Because it was a stupid fight,” Genevive snapped. “Something you, in your right mind would never have been involved in.”
“What can I do about it?” Lucretia asked quietly.
“The simplest thing?” Robles suggested. “Don’t drink.”
“Simple, hai,” Lucretia muttered before trailing off into French.
“Just try,” Robles said.