CherryTart
Cherrylicious
Ambrosia Binswin
Jonathan Attenack University was the shining star of the city of Vlelbury, it was one of the most prestigious universities in the world and for good reason too, only the brightest of the brightest were accepted or so they claimed as most students were children of the elite, the top one percent. It stood at the center of a box of artificial grass and trees, adorned with little benches to give it the look of a rustic old park; a tactic that allowed it to stand out among the sprawling sky-scrapers and skyrails surrounding the building, there were tubes set up all around the city propelling the fastest monorails in the last century to ever corner of it. One of them even had a stop right at the edge of the campus, the clear glass cylindrical tube dipped down and over to wedge itself between two skyscapers. The skyscrapers were those of Renou Fashion and Tervogh Engineering, two buildings connected via a sealed white skywalk with a large pink heart projected around it in a holographic form (at first the owners of the companies wanted a physical heart for the skywalk, but protests from Jonathan Attenack University's upper-staff brought such bad back-lash they had to change it.).
JAU itself contradicts the rustic look of the small "park" surrounding it through it's entire design, in the middle of the park is a massive amphitheater with a solid blue holographic dome, one that had a hexagonal pattern on it. Whenever anything touched the blue dome a ripple went through it like a rock hitting water, it was solid yet still malleable. The rest of the building was made of a sleek plastic, scrubbed so thoroughly by the cleaning drones that one could see their own reflection off it and not a speck of dust or dirt. On either side of the main amphitheater were two smaller ones, each around the size of a baseball field and the height of half the main building. These differed from the main building not just in size but due to the left one's many rings surrounding it with real grass and plants of all kinds on them, the building's dome was also made out of real glass. The right one was black, almost as if unfinished and lacked a see-through dome in favor of one made entirely from a metallic alloy; this alloy combined a small amount of metal with plastic, it was used in most architecture.
As advanced as these buildings were, the humans inside never seemed to never change.
"Took you long enough, I thought I said a week in advance?" Hissed a young lady with brunette hair pulled up into a high ponytail, it draped down to her ankles and drifted directly above the floor just barely keeping itself off the ground. She was a slender tan woman with toned calves hidden just beneath a pair of black leggings, which the top of were covered by a green and purple plaid skirt that had a black blazer covering the top of that. Currently, the wearer of this outfit had a slightly shorter girl wearing the same outfit pinned against an onyx wall by the collar of her own blazer, glaring into her eyes with her glowing yellow ones.
A moment of silent fell over the small bathroom, a completely square room with black walls all around that lacked any camera drones or surveillance systems at all. That was something Aubrie made sure of when she decided to negotiate with the brute currently pinning her to the wall, she nervously answered back with "I-It was a l-lot more work than I-I expected, L-L-Lilliahn." Her voice came out as more of a whimper than a statement.
All that came from Lilliahn in response was a click of her tongue and the release of Aubrie's collar, whom immediately fell to the floor coughing a few times as she adjusted the collar of her uniform. The yellow of her eyes drained, turning to a more standard hazel color as a projected yellow screen appeared before her, she remained silent as Aubrie picked herself up off the ground, leaning back against the wall as she waited for the larger girl to be done with her. She turned her head back at Aubrie, letting the projected screen block her view as she pointed at her, informing Aubrie, "Just transferred this week's assignments to your shitty Ard, I want it all in two days. Call it what you owe me for being so last minute this time."
The bright yellow hue returned to Lilliahn's eyes as the projection shrank from the air right into her pupils, she began walking towards the exit of the room when Aubrie suddenly spoke out, "W-Wait, my p-payment!" She reminded Lilliahn in a hasty tone, stumbling forward towards her much faster than she ever wanted to, she was scared of Lilliahn but it was too important to just let her slip away without giving up what she had requested. If it was money or something else, she would have gladly hid behind her fear and let Lilliahn walk out, but she desperately needed this to finish her latest project. Probably the only thing of worth she'd ever accomplish in life.
"Oh yeah, here's that piece of junk you wanted." Lilliahn casually remarked, yanking a plastic tube the size of a thumb from her pocket before nonchalantly tossing it behind her back. Before it hit the ground, the wall slid open and she left the dark bathroom of the engineering wing without a care in the world.
However, Aubrie shrieked as she ran forward as fast as she could to grab the little thing, if it hit the ground it might crack or shatter into a million pieces! This was old plastic she was dealing with, it was nothing like the modern alloys! Unfortunately for Aubrie, the furthest thing from her was an athlete so after fumbling the thing for an astounding five minutes it fell to the ground with an echoed clack. The fall didn't sound too bad at least... she was still sweating though, her uniform was going to be soaked at this rate. She snatched up the tube and shoved it into her pocket before rushing out of the room as fast as she could. Her boney pale legs carried her to class as fast as they could, the short jog through the halls left her completely out of breath, it was unfortunate her family couldn't afford any of the augments to help with her asthma the best she had was some old inhaler thingy.
Compared to most days her classes felt far longer, probably since her dreams for the past six years were finally going to come true. As the sun set, she walked across the campus grounds to the skyrail system, her old leather shoes scraped off the old-fashioned concrete of the campus' pathways. It was something most students weren't used to, but Aubrie was a slum-dweller where paved roads and concrete were actually quite common since most couldn't afford mag-cars and the city didn't care enough to replace the roads with that magnetic alloy most roads had been turned to. Once she got onto the skyrail she had to hand over a small cube she kept in her right blazer pocket, the "ticket" man pressed it into a square hole beside the door, confirmed she was a JAU student and let her pass handing the cube back as soon as he could. Those cubes were the equivalent of the eye augmentations middle-class and upper-class individuals had implanted, they let people access the internet and most services just using them and they also outed you as a member of the lower-class, something that always brought a pink flush to Aubrie's cheeks and let a sigh escape her mouth. She sat on one of the curved seats of the skyrail, rubbed her thumb across her cube as her emerald eyes looked down at her feet right through some fallen strands of her raggedy blonde hair. It only took ten minutes to get from one side of the metropolitan city to the other, she got off at the edge of the city where the rail ended right before the slums where she lived with her parents.
From atop the platform to enter the skyrail, she got a great view of the cruddy area she lived in compared to everywhere else, there were small houses stacked as close as possible with tiny roads in-between them that could barely fit a car. She sighed as she turned from the view, stomping into an air-tube at the side of the platform that shot her down to the ground at speeds that would kill someone was there a malfunction, only to use all that kinetic energy to send her through a loop at the bottom and let her exit to begin her hour-long walk home.
After that long walk, her legs were sore and her head was cast down at her feet until she reached the spot on her street right beside her house, she glanced up at her house and sighed for the umpteenth time that day. Coming home from JAU was always so disappointing, going from the high-tech university to her cruddy house almost made her wish she never got any of those scholarships. Her house was a small place that could barely fit a couch into the living-room/kitchen, her dull green eyes gazed over the dinky house over to the family car. A run-down SUV from back when gas cars were actually widespread, it was in down in a ditch off the side of the road like her house with a wooden ramp propped up to the road to get it out of the 'driveway' they called the dirt to the right of their house. She clicked her tongue before sauntering into her house, the living-room kitchen was a small room with a worn-out beige carpet over it, there was a torn up leather sofa right beside the door with a small tv about two feet away from it atop a thin coffee table. To the left of the room was the gas oven, a relic of the past similarly to the refrigerator and faucet sink. Taking the time to casually ignore letting her parents know she was home, she went for the door beside the television, she barged through it and slammed it shut taking a gander down the crudely crafted wooden steps to the basement that doubled as her living space. She always appreciated her parents letting her have the basement to herself, it was one of the largest rooms in the entire place and a rarity in the neighborhood, somewhere perfect for working on any engineering homework or crafting any robotics. Which was what she had been rushing for, she jogged down the stairs and took a sharp left careening through piled up boxes to a space with a table covered in little metal parts and a small robot that looked like a cootie-catcher. It's "eye" in the center of it was made of glass and currently switched off, she approached it with a smile.
Within seconds, she had her safety glasses over her typical thick black ones, had put the tube from Lilliahn down on the table and grabbed her multitool off the corner of the table. It was an old model, one in the shape of a cylindrical handle of a screwdriver without the head. Instead of the head it had a solid projection filter put into a hole on it, she clicked her hand onto a lonely button on the handle and watched it light up with all sorts of tool options. She scrolled the button to the right, making the holographic menu spin until it reached screwdrivers, once there she clicked the button again and scrolled it all the way to the flathead option. A green solid holographic flathead appeared out of the edge of the handle, she turned the cootie-catcher esc drone around and unscrewed the safety cap she put on the power area months ago to ensure no damage was made to the degrading parts.
The little tube given to her in the bathroom earlier was actually one of the first self-charging batteries, a laser-grid model that only needed a one-time startup to power itself for centuries through the laser-grid's constant regeneration. She brought the battery forward and jammed it into the spot on her model, worked like a charm! After screwing it back on, she dropped her multi-tool and brought out her ARD, the small cube, placing it down beside her robot. She placed a finger on the cube, and was half-blinded by the sudden computer screen that popped up from it. The screen was only visible to her, but it otherwise worked like a computer, she brought her hand to the screen and pulled on the screen, that action automatically made a holographic cable form into her hands which she plugged into her robot right through the protective casing to the battery, instructing the cube to send a small voltage into it.
Once that was achieved, she issued an order "Bastion Version 1.0, initiate start up sequence and run a diagnostics check."
Lady_Minerva
Jonathan Attenack University was the shining star of the city of Vlelbury, it was one of the most prestigious universities in the world and for good reason too, only the brightest of the brightest were accepted or so they claimed as most students were children of the elite, the top one percent. It stood at the center of a box of artificial grass and trees, adorned with little benches to give it the look of a rustic old park; a tactic that allowed it to stand out among the sprawling sky-scrapers and skyrails surrounding the building, there were tubes set up all around the city propelling the fastest monorails in the last century to ever corner of it. One of them even had a stop right at the edge of the campus, the clear glass cylindrical tube dipped down and over to wedge itself between two skyscapers. The skyscrapers were those of Renou Fashion and Tervogh Engineering, two buildings connected via a sealed white skywalk with a large pink heart projected around it in a holographic form (at first the owners of the companies wanted a physical heart for the skywalk, but protests from Jonathan Attenack University's upper-staff brought such bad back-lash they had to change it.).
JAU itself contradicts the rustic look of the small "park" surrounding it through it's entire design, in the middle of the park is a massive amphitheater with a solid blue holographic dome, one that had a hexagonal pattern on it. Whenever anything touched the blue dome a ripple went through it like a rock hitting water, it was solid yet still malleable. The rest of the building was made of a sleek plastic, scrubbed so thoroughly by the cleaning drones that one could see their own reflection off it and not a speck of dust or dirt. On either side of the main amphitheater were two smaller ones, each around the size of a baseball field and the height of half the main building. These differed from the main building not just in size but due to the left one's many rings surrounding it with real grass and plants of all kinds on them, the building's dome was also made out of real glass. The right one was black, almost as if unfinished and lacked a see-through dome in favor of one made entirely from a metallic alloy; this alloy combined a small amount of metal with plastic, it was used in most architecture.
As advanced as these buildings were, the humans inside never seemed to never change.
"Took you long enough, I thought I said a week in advance?" Hissed a young lady with brunette hair pulled up into a high ponytail, it draped down to her ankles and drifted directly above the floor just barely keeping itself off the ground. She was a slender tan woman with toned calves hidden just beneath a pair of black leggings, which the top of were covered by a green and purple plaid skirt that had a black blazer covering the top of that. Currently, the wearer of this outfit had a slightly shorter girl wearing the same outfit pinned against an onyx wall by the collar of her own blazer, glaring into her eyes with her glowing yellow ones.
A moment of silent fell over the small bathroom, a completely square room with black walls all around that lacked any camera drones or surveillance systems at all. That was something Aubrie made sure of when she decided to negotiate with the brute currently pinning her to the wall, she nervously answered back with "I-It was a l-lot more work than I-I expected, L-L-Lilliahn." Her voice came out as more of a whimper than a statement.
All that came from Lilliahn in response was a click of her tongue and the release of Aubrie's collar, whom immediately fell to the floor coughing a few times as she adjusted the collar of her uniform. The yellow of her eyes drained, turning to a more standard hazel color as a projected yellow screen appeared before her, she remained silent as Aubrie picked herself up off the ground, leaning back against the wall as she waited for the larger girl to be done with her. She turned her head back at Aubrie, letting the projected screen block her view as she pointed at her, informing Aubrie, "Just transferred this week's assignments to your shitty Ard, I want it all in two days. Call it what you owe me for being so last minute this time."
The bright yellow hue returned to Lilliahn's eyes as the projection shrank from the air right into her pupils, she began walking towards the exit of the room when Aubrie suddenly spoke out, "W-Wait, my p-payment!" She reminded Lilliahn in a hasty tone, stumbling forward towards her much faster than she ever wanted to, she was scared of Lilliahn but it was too important to just let her slip away without giving up what she had requested. If it was money or something else, she would have gladly hid behind her fear and let Lilliahn walk out, but she desperately needed this to finish her latest project. Probably the only thing of worth she'd ever accomplish in life.
"Oh yeah, here's that piece of junk you wanted." Lilliahn casually remarked, yanking a plastic tube the size of a thumb from her pocket before nonchalantly tossing it behind her back. Before it hit the ground, the wall slid open and she left the dark bathroom of the engineering wing without a care in the world.
However, Aubrie shrieked as she ran forward as fast as she could to grab the little thing, if it hit the ground it might crack or shatter into a million pieces! This was old plastic she was dealing with, it was nothing like the modern alloys! Unfortunately for Aubrie, the furthest thing from her was an athlete so after fumbling the thing for an astounding five minutes it fell to the ground with an echoed clack. The fall didn't sound too bad at least... she was still sweating though, her uniform was going to be soaked at this rate. She snatched up the tube and shoved it into her pocket before rushing out of the room as fast as she could. Her boney pale legs carried her to class as fast as they could, the short jog through the halls left her completely out of breath, it was unfortunate her family couldn't afford any of the augments to help with her asthma the best she had was some old inhaler thingy.
Compared to most days her classes felt far longer, probably since her dreams for the past six years were finally going to come true. As the sun set, she walked across the campus grounds to the skyrail system, her old leather shoes scraped off the old-fashioned concrete of the campus' pathways. It was something most students weren't used to, but Aubrie was a slum-dweller where paved roads and concrete were actually quite common since most couldn't afford mag-cars and the city didn't care enough to replace the roads with that magnetic alloy most roads had been turned to. Once she got onto the skyrail she had to hand over a small cube she kept in her right blazer pocket, the "ticket" man pressed it into a square hole beside the door, confirmed she was a JAU student and let her pass handing the cube back as soon as he could. Those cubes were the equivalent of the eye augmentations middle-class and upper-class individuals had implanted, they let people access the internet and most services just using them and they also outed you as a member of the lower-class, something that always brought a pink flush to Aubrie's cheeks and let a sigh escape her mouth. She sat on one of the curved seats of the skyrail, rubbed her thumb across her cube as her emerald eyes looked down at her feet right through some fallen strands of her raggedy blonde hair. It only took ten minutes to get from one side of the metropolitan city to the other, she got off at the edge of the city where the rail ended right before the slums where she lived with her parents.
From atop the platform to enter the skyrail, she got a great view of the cruddy area she lived in compared to everywhere else, there were small houses stacked as close as possible with tiny roads in-between them that could barely fit a car. She sighed as she turned from the view, stomping into an air-tube at the side of the platform that shot her down to the ground at speeds that would kill someone was there a malfunction, only to use all that kinetic energy to send her through a loop at the bottom and let her exit to begin her hour-long walk home.
After that long walk, her legs were sore and her head was cast down at her feet until she reached the spot on her street right beside her house, she glanced up at her house and sighed for the umpteenth time that day. Coming home from JAU was always so disappointing, going from the high-tech university to her cruddy house almost made her wish she never got any of those scholarships. Her house was a small place that could barely fit a couch into the living-room/kitchen, her dull green eyes gazed over the dinky house over to the family car. A run-down SUV from back when gas cars were actually widespread, it was in down in a ditch off the side of the road like her house with a wooden ramp propped up to the road to get it out of the 'driveway' they called the dirt to the right of their house. She clicked her tongue before sauntering into her house, the living-room kitchen was a small room with a worn-out beige carpet over it, there was a torn up leather sofa right beside the door with a small tv about two feet away from it atop a thin coffee table. To the left of the room was the gas oven, a relic of the past similarly to the refrigerator and faucet sink. Taking the time to casually ignore letting her parents know she was home, she went for the door beside the television, she barged through it and slammed it shut taking a gander down the crudely crafted wooden steps to the basement that doubled as her living space. She always appreciated her parents letting her have the basement to herself, it was one of the largest rooms in the entire place and a rarity in the neighborhood, somewhere perfect for working on any engineering homework or crafting any robotics. Which was what she had been rushing for, she jogged down the stairs and took a sharp left careening through piled up boxes to a space with a table covered in little metal parts and a small robot that looked like a cootie-catcher. It's "eye" in the center of it was made of glass and currently switched off, she approached it with a smile.
Within seconds, she had her safety glasses over her typical thick black ones, had put the tube from Lilliahn down on the table and grabbed her multitool off the corner of the table. It was an old model, one in the shape of a cylindrical handle of a screwdriver without the head. Instead of the head it had a solid projection filter put into a hole on it, she clicked her hand onto a lonely button on the handle and watched it light up with all sorts of tool options. She scrolled the button to the right, making the holographic menu spin until it reached screwdrivers, once there she clicked the button again and scrolled it all the way to the flathead option. A green solid holographic flathead appeared out of the edge of the handle, she turned the cootie-catcher esc drone around and unscrewed the safety cap she put on the power area months ago to ensure no damage was made to the degrading parts.
The little tube given to her in the bathroom earlier was actually one of the first self-charging batteries, a laser-grid model that only needed a one-time startup to power itself for centuries through the laser-grid's constant regeneration. She brought the battery forward and jammed it into the spot on her model, worked like a charm! After screwing it back on, she dropped her multi-tool and brought out her ARD, the small cube, placing it down beside her robot. She placed a finger on the cube, and was half-blinded by the sudden computer screen that popped up from it. The screen was only visible to her, but it otherwise worked like a computer, she brought her hand to the screen and pulled on the screen, that action automatically made a holographic cable form into her hands which she plugged into her robot right through the protective casing to the battery, instructing the cube to send a small voltage into it.
Once that was achieved, she issued an order "Bastion Version 1.0, initiate start up sequence and run a diagnostics check."
Lady_Minerva
