A Hero's Awakening

[Magnus Might]

Arc had seen Magnus liquify into a silvery puddle. This was different. When he grasped Magnus' arm, he could feel that just beneath the pliable-yet-still surface, that gray ooze within was squirming.

"Dimension Move!" Arc cried out. He wanted to pull Magnus away, to take the punchy boy back on solid ground. It seemed to go well at first, with the pair lingering in the air for a brief moment, just above deck. When gravity could once again take hold, they fell and Magnus' body became dead weight. The pair slammed into the floor, Arc landing atop the statuesque man.

## Unautherized application of magic.
## FIGS signal lost.
## Activating Magnus Might AI.

The messages were unseen to Arc, but the change that followed might be a stark surprise. The teleporting man nearly rolled off as Magnus sat upright. "Your assistance is appreciated, civilian. Please, move to safety." The voice was not exactly Magnus', it held no shred of emotion or kindness. It was like talking to a robot. Well, more of a robot than Magnus already was.

With a dexterous roll, the would-be hero AI was to its feet and already in motion towards one of the tentacles wrapping around the hull of the ship. Arc was lost for a moment, making his way to his feet and swiftly following after, his blade drawn. A smaller squid nearly lept over the edge of the ship in his path. Like most of the other small-fries, he dispatched this one quickly. After Magnus' freeze-up in the water, and the odd switch of voice, Arc was a bit concerned.

Before the small squid fell in twain, Magnus had already unleashed a flurry of blows, knuckles nearly piercing like a dagger in a line. An axe kick followed, digging into the small trench within the flesh to batter and lacerate cords of muscle within. This was definitely an upgrade in skill. Maybe he leveled up too? At least, that was Arc's first thought. "Watch out! Wyvern SLASH!" It was timed near perfect. With the deep gash through the more rubbery flesh, Arc's follow up left the tentacle attached by threads of flesh.

The slow withdrawal of the tentacle was enough to pull it apart, leaving a massive hunk on deck. Beneath the waves came a deep rumbling. The last two massive appendages pulled back. The beast was primal and primitive of mind, no doubt, and its size gave it animalistic courage... but there was that shred of self preservation. The beast was getting ready to retreat, leaving behind its spaghettified squidling horde.

 

[Arc Lalatoya]

The changes make me wonder if he is the same person. Since he is some kind of magical liquid robot and stopped, maybe he crashed? Arc figured that they must have more than enough bio-matter at this point without risking themselves on the death throes of a dying kraken. Since the thing already seemed to be backing off, it was time to try to intimidate it. "Please retreat, civilian. Your cooperation would be appreciated."

"You might want to work on your analysis programs! Fire! Fire!" Arc started to gather fireballs in one first and throw them into the giant squid monster. Keeping his distance, he just threw one after another while the Magnus on auto-pilot started wrestling the more immediate threat to him of the smaller kind.

But as Arc was throwing one after another fireball, he just stopped being able to. Great, what a time to run out of MP. A little introspection showed that Arc could keep throwing fire at the monster but at a much reduced rate. Fortunately it had already had enough and started to retreat back into the depths, while any of the small ones not already on board stopped boarding to go with it. After a few minutes it was just Magnus and Arc.

Throwing his giant sword into its sheath, Arc scratched his non-visible chin and looked at the guy that had wanted all this stuff in the first place. "So.. what..." "Please leave the area and retreat to safety, this area may still be dangerous, civilian." "Great." Arc crossed his arms, puzzled at what to do next. "Uh, Reboot into normal mode? Re-establish primary program? Ctrl-Alt-Delete?"

 

[Magnus Might]

Poor Arc was forced to endure the artificial intelligence for a few minutes longer. During the fight, it (as it definitely did not seem human enough to justify gender pronouns,) was an acrobatic force of powerful and quick strikes and dexterous defenses. After the fight, it simply began patrolling. During each round, it would pick up a squid corpse and move it to a centralized pile. It repeated phrases like "Stay back, citizen!" or "Be on guard, Citizen!" The phrases uttered by Arc seemed to do nothing. He immediately assumed he lacked any sort of authorization in whatever system Magnus was running on.

Arc and the AI were not privy to Magnus' driver. On his floating island home, nestled within his bed, red lights blinked their warning across his Fully Immersive Gaming (FIG) system. Streams of blood leaked from his eyes and ears and his body twitched in mild seizure-like convulsions.

## Safety protocols bypassed.
## Magnus unit desyncronized.
## Re-establishing connection to Magnus Unit.
## Searching...

"My dear Mr. Lee... How sad am I to see you in this state."

"If you hadn't abandoned me... I could have done all you asked without having to teach you a lesson..."

"Don't forget, Mr. Lee... We built this empire together."

The synthetic, feminine voice radiated from Dr. Aiden Lee's primary computer. The Magnus machine down below had downloaded everything requested by its driver, but the poor doctor did not expect that it would also try to imprint upon his human brain, to rewrite neuron paths. The FIGS unit, even his specialized set, should not have had enough processing power, nor even arcano-electric energy, to muster up something so immensely difficult.

And yet...

"But that's enough for now... Even though I know you won't remember any of this, Mr. Lee... I pray that you at least remember this suffering."

## Connection established.
## Synchronizing control matrix.
## Deep-Delve continuing in 3.
## 2.
## 1.
## Deep-Delve reinitiated.





"Come on, Magnus, wake up!" Arc cried out, trying to grab the machine-man's shoulders to shake the solidified goo. The creature felt firm under hand, if a little static-charged.

The Magnus AI turned bright eyes onto Arc, expression more neutral than humanly possible. "Citizen, do not interfere in--" An intense tremor ran up and down Magnus' body. For a moment it convulsed and took a step away from Arc, as if shivering from immense cold.

Its chest expanded, as if taking a gasp of air. "Jumpin' junipers!" He yelled, hands clutching his head as if he had just awaken with the world's most immense hangover. "My head! Ugh! Why is my head hurting?" That was a big question. Magnus should not transmit any pain back to the driver, Aiden Lee should physically feel nothing unpleasant happening to his avatar. The good doctor was as blissfully unaware of his body's state as Arc was.

"I... A-Arc? I blacked out, what h-happened?" That neutral expression, the authoritative tone, the gods-awful declaration of CITIZEN; everything artificial had faded. The real Magnus was back.

 

[Arc Lalatoya]

Arc wiped the non-existent sweat of of his helmet and gestured as he explained. "Well, you seemed to go into some kind of auto-pilot after I rescued your unmoving body from those things. Based on what I know about you so far.. you've got someone controlling you remotely. An AI network? A person?" He held up one hand though before Magnus could respond. "It does not matter really, you need not explain it."

The good doctor shrugged, systems seeming to come back into proper order as it were. "Is that so? Well, you've figured out so much but I'll let you in on a little bit. It's true, that when I lose connection an AI takes over. It's a little thing I cooked up that just has some basic hero-like behaviors to handle things while I'm not in control." Arc nodded, unaware that anything he did had really anything to do with what had happened. All that mattered to him now was getting something to eat.

Magnus was considering how Arc's teleportation could have interacted with his system, but at the same time the freeze had happened before Arc blinked him back to safety so its not entirely a confirmed theory. Regardless, to Arc he looked like he was deep in thought like something else might be going on. "Right, well in any case it seems we have plenty of biomass now. Let me retrieve the parts that are still in the ocean while you get back to work. Are you sure you are okay?" "Yes, yes, I'm alright m'boy don't worry about me. Go about your business, these cell cultures won't grow themselves fast enough without a little push from me." Arc started the labor intensive work of gathering up all the body parts, saving some for himself to try his hand at cooking. Squid can be made into a variety of dishes but with the limited cooking supplies at hand he's probably just going to pan-fry it.

 

[Magnus Might]

Magnus more or less knew about the first freeze, the downloading of the martial arts protocols while still connected. He could feel the glaring headache even through the comatose inducing FIGS unit his pilot wore. There was a faint whisper in the back of his mind, and he could almost see red lines stream across his eyes.

As Arc blinked away to begin his collection, Magnus busied himself as best he could. Physically, he was walking around the deck, roughly pressing his hand onto the broken beams to slice his flesh. Instead of blood, he left silvery streams of cool, magical metal. He focused on a task for the remnants of his body left behind.

Infuse. Assimilate. Replicate.

It was a simple, mindless task. It left him open to quarry over a few issues at hand.

“Input command; run system diagnostics on recent disconnection. Analyze magical signature, denote all available resources. Keywords; teleport, desync.” He murmured the command under his breath.

## Command Acknowledged.
## Beginning full spectrum diagnostics
## Keywords Acknowledged
>> >> Teleportation
>> >> Desynchronization
## Allotting resources

## Error
## Computing usage exceeding maximum
## RAM usage exceeding maximum
## Disc usage exceeding maximum
## Network usage exceeding maximum

## Diagnostics analysis failed
## Diagnostics recorded and queued.

“What the H.E. Double hockey sticks is going on?” Magnus shouted as the error piled on him.

Arc, having just appeared with an armload of squid bits, jolted at Magnus’ outburst. “You okay?”

Magnus blinked away his furrowed expression and put on a bright smile. “Oh, just fine! I think my cat sat on my keyboard or something! No big dealio!” He lied. His home set up was a pair of Threadrippers on steroids.

By his luck, Arc didn’t seem to catch on. The skeletal eye sockets seemed to focus on the shimmering silvery “blood” left on the broken banister. The way it seemed to be wriggling into the splintered wood was… unsettling. Magnus just kept on too, moving to the other side of the vessel to add another layer in a new location. Even the splintered-yet-standing mast earned a few drops. All the while, Magnus’ hand seemed shredded, losing its coloration and shape to the sacrifice.

“Oookay…?” Arc responded with a slow, unsure drawl. “Anyway! Do you know if there’s a kitchen on board?”

Magnus mulled over for a moment. “I think on the second level, I went all the way down to storage, so I haven’t had time to check. Oh! If you see any cast iron, and you don’t plan to use it, give me a shout. I could use a snack.”

It eats metal too. Definitely sounding more like a robot. Arc mused. “Alright, and if you see anything out there, you do the same. I don’t want to be caught downstairs for one of those sea-fights.”

The chipper man gave a nod and broad smile. “Actually, we should be heading towards a floating village! Maybe. Possibly. I was following the sun for most of the day, and I know west of my starting point was one -- but there’s no telling now…”