Chapter 1: Awake?

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Cold. Stiff but flowing. Water? I feel.. tired? I need to get up. Stand up!

A new yet familiar sensation fills my being a rush of power to my systems. My core is booting up again yet feeling as if it was my first. I'm a jaeger, well I think I am, but Jaegers don't think. Some had an A.I, but they didn't have this much control I'm sure.

Putting aside my questions of self, I need to focus back on standing. It had been years since I had powered up. My power core had almost half its charge and capacity.. what would happen when it ran out? Would I die? Sleep forever? Is there even a difference? I don't want to know the answer.

My arm and leg servos groan against the rusted joints, just moving an inch was going to be a challenge. I was laying under water after all. I had an idea, by charging up the capacitors for my long since corroded plasmacaster and redirecting the power at discharge to the servos. I could force them to scrape the rust off.. It was a massive risk that depended on the rust damage not being too severe on both my weapon charge system and the joint of the servos. If too bad I risk either frying my old circuits and losing all chance of control.. or lose the limb entirely.

I decided to test it on my weaponized arm first since it was useless with its current damage. I begun the charging sequence sacrificing a small buy valuable chuck of power to the super capacitors. Relief filling me when they didn't immediately explode. But one thing I didn't account for happened.

I couldn't "fire" it without a pilot.

Even though I knew no one would be there, I checked my internal cameras.. It was dark, the lights were long eroded yet the electronics somehow safe, maybe I had good waterproofing? The rust stopping me from moving suggests otherwise, but It was a win so I chose not to challenge it. I was surprised to find there was someone there, dead of course, it made sense I couldn't have just appeared here. Though It was saddening to know my pilot had suffered such a fate. He was such a nice person, I can just feel he was. The lack of a second pilot probably meant he was either abandoned or was solo piloting me. A stupid thing to do.

As sad as this was I could make this work, he was strapped in still and fully hooked up. While he couldn't drift for obvious dead reasons. I think I could fool.. myself? Into think he had. All these restrictions were imposed by myself right? Tricking yourself can't be too hard. So I started up the solo drift sequence, ignoring all the very annoying warning signs that went off. I was expecting it to do nothing in all honesty since the brain was dead, there'd be nothing to detect right? I was wrong, it seems I had electrocuted him thanks to a faulty wire which caused a small amount of brain activity. Like being brain dead, but even more dead. Still just that minor response was enough and I fooled my systems into thinking I was being piloted.

Sending the power from my charged and waiting capacitors to the arms where my projectile weapons were would require further permission from the pilot, something I can't do. But while piloted, the emergency rerouting of power was automatic and so something I could control. It just meant that if I had to send it to the opposing arm and intentionally cause damage to the capacitors by overcharging them. choosing the legs would've seemed like a smarter choice, but I was currently laid down, just my legs alone would prove very difficult if not impossible to stand or at the very least power costly. With the arm I could use it to scrape of force away the corroded metal plating or just drag myself along the ocean floor. Assuming this was the ocean.

This was a one shot scenario. If I used too little power I'd waste the capacitors and do nothing. Too much and I'd destroy myself.

I tried moving the servos once more to get a feel for the amount of power I'd need before increasing the power to my capacitors causing a surge and redirecting that power straight to the many servos in my right arm. The results were instant, as if a doctor had just hit my elbow with their enormous hammer my arm flew up shredding off the corroded metal plating just as hoped, same for my shoulder, wrist and fingers.

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