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Loveless 0- Chapter 5: Rebirth and Reconciliation
      As she flipped the pages the feelings in her head began to expand every time she saw the green haired girl.  The green haired girl and Juno eating ice cream, the green haired girl and Juno holding hands in front of the fence in the backyard, the green haired girl laying on the couch in Juno’s arms…all of these pictures set off something inside Sethra.  Eventually the feeling in her head was like that of a surge of electricity.  She felt something burn out in main circuit board.   She clutched her head as her systems tried to go into repair mode, but the incomplete programming caused the whole system to crash.  Sethra collapsed on the couch.    When she awoke she couldn’t hear her programming anymore, and the memories she saw in the photo album were her own.  She was afraid of her new emotions.  She had become completely defective.  She could no longer feel the beating of her CPU, she could no longer hear the instructions being fed into her android brain, and all the old commands to move her arms and her legs didn’t work anymore.  They now worked instantaneously at the speed of thought.  “What…what is this?  What happened to me?”  Sethra wondered.  With that she stood up and almost immediately fell down as her gyroscopic sensors failed to input stabilization information into her motor centers.  Sethra looked around the room bewildered and tried to pull herself up onto the couch she had been sitting on.  Her cyborgnetic muscles were still in place, but operating them required something she lacked.  Her movements were as unrefined as a childs, until the slight memories of being human helped her move her augmented muscles.  She managed to barely pull herself up onto the couch, and then she just slumped over on the couch.
      An hour later Juno awoke, walking down the hall to find out why Sethra had never come to bed.  He found her slumped over on the couch looking almost dead.
      “SETHRA!  SETHRA!  CAN YOU HEAR ME?  SETHRA?!”  Juno screamed frightened.  All Sethra could do in response was move her eyes and look at him, she tried to move her robotic vocal cords using her now human thoughts.  The only noises she could make were slight gasping noises.  She looked at him as she fruitlessly tried to talk.  It was so frustrating for her, tears started to flow from her eyes.  “What happened Sethra?”  Juno asked as he glanced over and saw the open picture albums.  Juno however wasn’t able to put things together as he didn’t see what happened.  Juno picked up Sethra who was noticeably lighter than before and moved her to the bedroom, laying her gently on his old bed.  He didn’t know what to do…a human doctor could do nothing for an android…even if there was a doctor around here.  Fortunately for him he didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
      “She’s defective!” a voice from the doorway said.
      “Who’s there?!” Juno said clearly startled.
      “My name is Nachtlichter, I am from Bitri Coporation…your…or should I say our android there is broken.” the man said from the shadows.
      “Bitri…corporation…you’re here to take her away from me…and more importantly how did you find us?”  Juno said defiantly.
      “Each of our androids has a tracker built into it, so if a owner loses it, we can retrieve it for them for a small fee…and besides that  Mr. Juno…you misunderstand our intentions.  You have gotten caught in the middle of something you shouldn’t have…we only wanted to come and make it up to you.” Nachtlichter said with a devilish grin.
      “But, you chased us here…” Juno said before Nachtlichter cut him off.
      “We chased you?  Don’t be ridiculous…that was the Neo Berlin Polizei…not us Mr. Juno…”
      “So…can you repair her?”  Juno asked beginning to trust the man.
      “I’m afraid not…this one is defective…even though you didn’t buy one from us…we will be glad to give you a free one to make up for getting you caught up in this mess.  We will even clear all charges for the automobile you stole…what do you say?  We have a fresh one in the truck we will give you.  And we will give you a ride back home…your apartment is completely repaired…and we will even throw in a Bitri Corp gift card so you can buy your new…doll…some clothing or whatever.  All you have to do is give her back to us and pretend this never happened.” Natchlichter rattled on.
      Juno looked solemnly at the floor.  “But…she was special…she looked just like my former fiancée who died during the CASKET raid.  And not to mention she even acted like her…”
      “Well Mr. Juno, we can make the new one look just like this one…but the anomalies you saw with this one…they were purely coincidental.” Nachtlichter said getting impatient.
      Sethra turned her head to Juno and managed to mouth one word, “No…”
      That was all the resolution Juno needed and he stood up and said, “No dice…I can’t give her back to you.”
      “But Mr. Juno…she isn’t yours to give…” Nachtlichter said as a loud rumbling emanated from outside the building.  “Well, if that’s going to be your answer Mr. Juno…then you can just die in obscurity…”
      As Nachtlichter finished his diatribe, Juno heard a sudden crash and passed out before he had a chance to act.  Sethra’s eyes widened in terror as a Totenmaschine blasted a hole through the wall and grabbed Juno in its massive hands.  The Totenmaschine stood 12’ high and held Juno’s limp lifeless body like a rag doll.  Another Totenmaschine stood back behind the hole with a large hammer in its hand.  A single shell ejected from the hammer as the Totenmaschine walked into the house.  Nachtlichter snapped his fingers and ordered “Destroy this place, but bring me the girl.”
      Sethra lay helpless on the bed, her thoughts unable to control her movement.  The second Totenmaschine sheathed its weapon on its magnetic scabbard and tossed the android girl over its shoulder and began to walk to a truck parked outside, barely visible through the dust cloud from the demolished wall.  Sethra used every bit of her concentration to reach out to Juno.
      Juno regained consciousness to see blurrily that someone was reaching out to him.  Nachtlichter saw him coming to and signaled to the robot to kill him.  The machine hesitated.  Nachtlichter grimaced and reached into his pocket pressing a button.
      “God damn it…don’t tell me you are defective too?” Nachtlichter said ambiguously.
        The Totenmaschine then resumed functioning normally.  It flung Juno against the wall and readied its hammer in a split second to charge and smash Juno against the wall.  Juno hit the wall and in slow motion he saw the giant hammer coming towards him.  He slumped down due to the shock of his impending death and just barely dodged the blast.  The hammer hit the wall and at first the wall only cracked, but then the wall disintegrated as the hammer went off and ejected another empty shell.  Juno lying against the bottom of the wall was still sent flying by the blast into the next room.  The force of the blast knocked over the book case scattering his family photo’s everywhere.  Juno tumbled and lay among them prone and passed out.  The Totenmaschine lumbered into the room and raised its hammer up high ready to smash its victim.
      Pictures of Juno’s mother and sister landed all over the place on top of Juno.  Juno opened his eyes and barely squeaked out, “Please stop…don’t take them away from me again!”
      The scattered pictures still fluttered in the air, again the robot hesitated.  The robot lowered its hammer.  Nachtlichter pressed the button repeatedly to no avail.
The Totenmaschine turned to Nachtlichter, its one robotic eye glowing red and instead charged at him.  Nachtlichter unable to react in time was bull rushed through a nearby wall and subsequently consciousness.  The Totenmaschine put its hammer away and went back to the room where Juno was.  As Juno regained consciousness the Totenmaschine picked him up gently and then with great large strides ran and crashed through the wall and out of the house.
Nachtlichter awoke shortly there after and pressing a small switch on his ear he spoke into his communicator, “Totenmaschine number 12 just went rogue on us!  What’s our status?”
The communicator squawked back “We have the girl sir…”  Just as the person on the communicator finished his sentence another loud explosion was heard.  “Sir…truck number 2 was just taken out by Totenmaschine number 12…should we follow?”
“No matter…its battery will die soon anyways…and we have the girl.  So now no one will ever discover our secret.”  Nachtlichter said smiling victoriously.
“What about the male sir?”
“Leave him…no one will believe that fool anyways…besides, the Polizei are looking for him…he’ll die certainly.”
With that Nachtlichter got up and dusted himself off and walked out to the truck as it stopped and opened its passenger door for him to get in.  His associate asked him “What about the other unit we left in the other truck chief?  You know the one we were going to give to him to keep his mouth shut?”
Nachtlichter glared at him “Do YOU want to dig it out of that flaming heap?”
“No sir!”
“Good, I’m glad you answered your own question…now get us out of here now before anyone sees us!”
      As the truck drove off back towards Neo Berlin, Totenmaschine number 12 headed off into the woods…the robot seemed to know where it was going.  It ran charging through thick brush and trees as it finally got to an open clearing…somehow untouched by the war.  The clearing was full of beautiful white flowers.  The flowers resembled bells in shape and had a color so smooth they almost appeared to be made out of glass.  Juno although still not quite awake yet recognized the smell of the flowers.  As Juno regained his sight he knew where he was immediately.  It was the clearing where his sister and he used to play as children.  Across from him sat the Totenmaschine sitting as demurely as a 12 foot tall robot could, while ungracefully trying to make a headpiece out of flowers.  Juno didn’t understand at the time…but he knew somehow what he was looking at was his sister.  But where was Sethra, and why do the dead keep reappearing as machines?  And more importantly…why did Bitri Corp want Sethra back so much?  He didn’t know where she went, or exactly how to get her back…but when the giant robot almost crushed him with a hug as he awakened he had a great idea.

Description
Loveless 0- Chapter 5: Rebirth and Reconciliation
      As she flipped the pages the feelings in her head began to expand every time she saw the green haired girl.  The green haired girl and Juno eating ice cream, the green haired girl and Juno holding hands in front of the fence in the backyard, the green haired girl laying on the couch in Juno’s arms…all of these pictures set off something inside Sethra.  Eventually the feeling in her head was like that of a surge of electricity.  She felt something burn out in main circuit board.   She clutched her head as her systems tried to go into repair mode, but the incomplete programming caused the whole system to crash.  Sethra collapsed on the couch.    When she awoke she couldn’t hear her programming anymore, and the memories she saw in the photo album were her own.  She was afraid of her new emotions.  She had become completely defective.  She could no longer feel the beating of her CPU, she could no longer hear the instructions being fed into her android brain, and all the old commands to move her arms and her legs didn’t work anymore.  They now worked instantaneously at the speed of thought.  “What…what is this?  What happened to me?”  Sethra wondered.  With that she stood up and almost immediately fell down as her gyroscopic sensors failed to input stabilization information into her motor centers.  Sethra looked around the room bewildered and tried to pull herself up onto the couch she had been sitting on.  Her cyborgnetic muscles were still in place, but operating them required something she lacked.  Her movements were as unrefined as a childs, until the slight memories of being human helped her move her augmented muscles.  She managed to barely pull herself up onto the couch, and then she just slumped over on the couch.
      An hour later Juno awoke, walking down the hall to find out why Sethra had never come to bed.  He found her slumped over on the couch looking almost dead.
      “SETHRA!  SETHRA!  CAN YOU HEAR ME?  SETHRA?!”  Juno screamed frightened.  All Sethra could do in response was move her eyes and look at him, she tried to move her robotic vocal cords using her now human thoughts.  The only noises she could make were slight gasping noises.  She looked at him as she fruitlessly tried to talk.  It was so frustrating for her, tears started to flow from her eyes.  “What happened Sethra?”  Juno asked as he glanced over and saw the open picture albums.  Juno however wasn’t able to put things together as he didn’t see what happened.  Juno picked up Sethra who was noticeably lighter than before and moved her to the bedroom, laying her gently on his old bed.  He didn’t know what to do…a human doctor could do nothing for an android…even if there was a doctor around here.  Fortunately for him he didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
      “She’s defective!” a voice from the doorway said.
      “Who’s there?!” Juno said clearly startled.
      “My name is Nachtlichter, I am from Bitri Coporation…your…or should I say our android there is broken.” the man said from the shadows.
      “Bitri…corporation…you’re here to take her away from me…and more importantly how did you find us?”  Juno said defiantly.
      “Each of our androids has a tracker built into it, so if a owner loses it, we can retrieve it for them for a small fee…and besides that  Mr. Juno…you misunderstand our intentions.  You have gotten caught in the middle of something you shouldn’t have…we only wanted to come and make it up to you.” Nachtlichter said with a devilish grin.
      “But, you chased us here…” Juno said before Nachtlichter cut him off.
      “We chased you?  Don’t be ridiculous…that was the Neo Berlin Polizei…not us Mr. Juno…”
      “So…can you repair her?”  Juno asked beginning to trust the man.
      “I’m afraid not…this one is defective…even though you didn’t buy one from us…we will be glad to give you a free one to make up for getting you caught up in this mess.  We will even clear all charges for the automobile you stole…what do you say?  We have a fresh one in the truck we will give you.  And we will give you a ride back home…your apartment is completely repaired…and we will even throw in a Bitri Corp gift card so you can buy your new…doll…some clothing or whatever.  All you have to do is give her back to us and pretend this never happened.” Natchlichter rattled on.
      Juno looked solemnly at the floor.  “But…she was special…she looked just like my former fiancée who died during the CASKET raid.  And not to mention she even acted like her…”
      “Well Mr. Juno, we can make the new one look just like this one…but the anomalies you saw with this one…they were purely coincidental.” Nachtlichter said getting impatient.
      Sethra turned her head to Juno and managed to mouth one word, “No…”
      That was all the resolution Juno needed and he stood up and said, “No dice…I can’t give her back to you.”
      “But Mr. Juno…she isn’t yours to give…” Nachtlichter said as a loud rumbling emanated from outside the building.  “Well, if that’s going to be your answer Mr. Juno…then you can just die in obscurity…”
      As Nachtlichter finished his diatribe, Juno heard a sudden crash and passed out before he had a chance to act.  Sethra’s eyes widened in terror as a Totenmaschine blasted a hole through the wall and grabbed Juno in its massive hands.  The Totenmaschine stood 12’ high and held Juno’s limp lifeless body like a rag doll.  Another Totenmaschine stood back behind the hole with a large hammer in its hand.  A single shell ejected from the hammer as the Totenmaschine walked into the house.  Nachtlichter snapped his fingers and ordered “Destroy this place, but bring me the girl.”
      Sethra lay helpless on the bed, her thoughts unable to control her movement.  The second Totenmaschine sheathed its weapon on its magnetic scabbard and tossed the android girl over its shoulder and began to walk to a truck parked outside, barely visible through the dust cloud from the demolished wall.  Sethra used every bit of her concentration to reach out to Juno.
      Juno regained consciousness to see blurrily that someone was reaching out to him.  Nachtlichter saw him coming to and signaled to the robot to kill him.  The machine hesitated.  Nachtlichter grimaced and reached into his pocket pressing a button.
      “God damn it…don’t tell me you are defective too?” Nachtlichter said ambiguously.
        The Totenmaschine then resumed functioning normally.  It flung Juno against the wall and readied its hammer in a split second to charge and smash Juno against the wall.  Juno hit the wall and in slow motion he saw the giant hammer coming towards him.  He slumped down due to the shock of his impending death and just barely dodged the blast.  The hammer hit the wall and at first the wall only cracked, but then the wall disintegrated as the hammer went off and ejected another empty shell.  Juno lying against the bottom of the wall was still sent flying by the blast into the next room.  The force of the blast knocked over the book case scattering his family photo’s everywhere.  Juno tumbled and lay among them prone and passed out.  The Totenmaschine lumbered into the room and raised its hammer up high ready to smash its victim.
      Pictures of Juno’s mother and sister landed all over the place on top of Juno.  Juno opened his eyes and barely squeaked out, “Please stop…don’t take them away from me again!”
      The scattered pictures still fluttered in the air, again the robot hesitated.  The robot lowered its hammer.  Nachtlichter pressed the button repeatedly to no avail.
The Totenmaschine turned to Nachtlichter, its one robotic eye glowing red and instead charged at him.  Nachtlichter unable to react in time was bull rushed through a nearby wall and subsequently consciousness.  The Totenmaschine put its hammer away and went back to the room where Juno was.  As Juno regained consciousness the Totenmaschine picked him up gently and then with great large strides ran and crashed through the wall and out of the house.
Nachtlichter awoke shortly there after and pressing a small switch on his ear he spoke into his communicator, “Totenmaschine number 12 just went rogue on us!  What’s our status?”
The communicator squawked back “We have the girl sir…”  Just as the person on the communicator finished his sentence another loud explosion was heard.  “Sir…truck number 2 was just taken out by Totenmaschine number 12…should we follow?”
“No matter…its battery will die soon anyways…and we have the girl.  So now no one will ever discover our secret.”  Nachtlichter said smiling victoriously.
“What about the male sir?”
“Leave him…no one will believe that fool anyways…besides, the Polizei are looking for him…he’ll die certainly.”
With that Nachtlichter got up and dusted himself off and walked out to the truck as it stopped and opened its passenger door for him to get in.  His associate asked him “What about the other unit we left in the other truck chief?  You know the one we were going to give to him to keep his mouth shut?”
Nachtlichter glared at him “Do YOU want to dig it out of that flaming heap?”
“No sir!”
“Good, I’m glad you answered your own question…now get us out of here now before anyone sees us!”
      As the truck drove off back towards Neo Berlin, Totenmaschine number 12 headed off into the woods…the robot seemed to know where it was going.  It ran charging through thick brush and trees as it finally got to an open clearing…somehow untouched by the war.  The clearing was full of beautiful white flowers.  The flowers resembled bells in shape and had a color so smooth they almost appeared to be made out of glass.  Juno although still not quite awake yet recognized the smell of the flowers.  As Juno regained his sight he knew where he was immediately.  It was the clearing where his sister and he used to play as children.  Across from him sat the Totenmaschine sitting as demurely as a 12 foot tall robot could, while ungracefully trying to make a headpiece out of flowers.  Juno didn’t understand at the time…but he knew somehow what he was looking at was his sister.  But where was Sethra, and why do the dead keep reappearing as machines?  And more importantly…why did Bitri Corp want Sethra back so much?  He didn’t know where she went, or exactly how to get her back…but when the giant robot almost crushed him with a hug as he awakened he had a great idea.