The Black Dragon

Chapter Eleven: Jordge

"speaking"
'thinking/thoughts'
((sign language))

Finally got off my lazy ass and decided to work on the story. I have so many ideas but my motivation dwindles sometimes when it finally comes down to working on this story. Nevertheless, I finally updated! And more is going to be coming soon! I've been working on a concept sheet for Jordge (no promises it'll look good) so you all can have a better understanding of his appearance.

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Third POV

James was startled from his resting mode when he heard a loud clang from the main room of the warehouse. He sat up from where he was laying on the floor, feeling his endoskeleton protest for a moment for moving so quickly after being idle for so long, before he finally stood up. There was a quiet sound of what sounded to be glass dragging against the floor as James's wings finally synced with his motherboard and moved up to hover behind his back.

James silently crept up to the door of the breakroom and slowly turned the slightly rusted handle. The door opened slowly with a long quiet squeak. James grimaced slightly and hoped the strider hadn't been woken up. He peeked his head so he could see through the crack of the door and saw that the strider was still asleep. His shoulders sagged slightly and he opened the door fully, but the picture in front of him was one he was not fully prepared for. The strider was sleeping upside down with their mounted gun in the direction of the ceiling and their head tucked down into the bowl of the toilet so it was trapped between the toilet bowl and the floor. Their legs were also spread out, taking up as much room as possible, in a very haphazard way.

The sight alone made James shake his head and rub his lens, he shook his left leg a bit to help the air flow into and out of his vents better so his fans wouldn't make too much noise trying to cool his microprocessor. James turned his head and saw the source of the sound that woke him, the source being that the front right leg of the strider had slid down and knocked over a few long pieces of rebar that had been leaned against the wall. This prompted James to shake his head a bit and let out a static laced sigh. While he does have a voice box, it is sadly pretty basic and can't produce much more than clicks, sighs, whirs, and roars.

James moved silently across the room, watching the strider closely as it somehow managed to stay asleep. He didn't trust the strider a lot, nice or not it was still a skibidi, and skibidis are not to be trusted. So he went over to another section of the warehouse, mainly looking for supplies and something to pass the time with. It took James a few minutes to find what he wanted but he eventually found some scrap metal and blank paper that was in a copy machine, the paper was a bit yellow, more so an ivory color, from age but that didn't mean he couldn't use it. As James was walking back to the main area of the warehouse, there was another loud sound, not like the clang from earlier but more like slamming a cabinet door shut. This immediately put James on edge and his shoulders tensed. He slowly crept towards the main area of the warehouse, his shoes hardly making any sound as he moved, and peeked through the crack in the door that led to the main area of the warehouse.

The strider, which he still refused to acknowledge it by it's silly name, was leaned forwards on its front two legs and in the middle of peeling the label off of a can of soup, which James managed to identify as chicken noodle soup from the Campbell company. It took a few minutes for the strider to get the label off of the can, but once it did it spat the label off to the side and leaned down again, taking the can into it's mouth while letting the other end of it rest on the ground. The strider bit down on the top of the can, with surprisingly high jaw strength, until it broke off. It managed to keep almost all of the soup in the can but a few drops did fall on the floor, though that didn't seem to phase the strider. The strider then chewed on the part of the can it had bitten off like it was taffy before swallowing the metal.

If James had a mouth then his jaw would be on the floor, he wasn't aware that the skibidis could eat, or that they even needed to eat in the first place. So he continued to watch as the strider leaned down again and picked up the can with it's mouth, able to hold pretty much the entire can in it's mouth, and leaned it's head back, chugging the entire can of soup in one go. It then bit down on the can once the soup was gone and chewed on it like it had done with the top portion of the can before swallowing it.

James stood there, completely dumbfounded by what he just witnessed. The strider paused for a brief moment once it seemed content with it's meal before it suddenly snapped it's head in James's direction. James's faded green headlight flickered a bit, the only involuntary reaction his new programming could give, and he mentally cursed the scientist toilet for changing his headlight color to something that would always glow a bit unless it was completely powered down. So James opened the door and walked into the main area of the warehouse, gesturing to the spot where the can once was on the floor. The strider merely stared in response, its eyes a bit wide, and James couldn't tell if it was from shock or if it was just a normal look for the strider. James's shoulders sagged, knowing he likely wouldn't get an answer from the strider and just waved the strider off dismissively like he usually did.

James walked past the strider, avoiding the large metal leg in his way, and opened up the small door beside the main garage door of the warehouse before walking outside for the first time in an entire day. The sudden realization of what happened only a day ago slapped James in the face once he closed the door behind himself. He stood there for a bit, staring ahead of himself as the sun continued to rise into the sky, the sounds of yet another battle between the Alliance and Skibidis reached James's audio receptors, though he seemed not to acknowledge these sounds. He instead started to go over what had happened within the period he was on the skibidis side without being aware, something that he hadn't really considered much since he had been too occupied having a CPU breakdown.

He brought his left hand over to his right one and rubbed his right palm with his left thumb. The hands in front of him were the very ones that held the weapons that took down entire units of agents, and those hands, were his own hands. The ones that decapitated fellow agents, the ones that ripped their cores out and made him watch the light fade from them, the ones that hurt those he was closest to. He was a murderer, he couldn't look past that, even if he had been brainwashed by the toilets. Having his very code, his very being, altered was worse than being infected by a parasite because he made all those decisions on his own, there was no parasite on his neck telling him what to do or which agent to harm next.

His processor went down the rabbit hole of bad thoughts for the next few minutes before an explosion rang out a bit closer than the previous ones, the battle was moving towards him whether he liked it or not. The explosion seemed to prompt a distressed noise from the strider that was on the other side of the garage door behind James. This noise seemed to go right past James's audio receptor but he did subtly glance back at the door for a moment. James would have to make a decision, and he'd have to make one soon. This decision...

...could decide the entire fate of the world...