Nanosuit and Soul Magic: A Crysis/RWBY crossover

chapter 2

"So, I'm no longer on earth, we're at least an hour away from the nearest safe area by foot, and the woods are filled with nightmarish hell beasts."

"...Yes."

That's it. Someone has to be fucking with me. I dunno if it's God, or Allah, or the fucking Flying Spaghetti Monster, there has to be someone screwing around with me. Nobody has luck this bad. I come right from a two day long running battle against invaders from the fucking stars. I've been dead for over forty-eight hours, and the only rest I've gotten has been when something knocks me out for a few minutes. Now, I've got even more shit to deal with, and who knows what I'm gonna find on the other end? After all, even the dudes on my side were kinda freaked out by me. A teenaged girl's first reaction on seeing me was to shoot me in the head. Not to mention that, based on what they've told me, they can do stuff that's flat out magic. I called bullshit, and Ruby proved it by zipping around like the fucking Flash, and that was before they told me that their goddamn souls could form fucking personal forcefields.

Ah, fuck it. One step at a time. Speaking of which, first thing's first.

"By the way, your friend's a robot."

Alright, shitty situation aside, Ruby's reactions were kinda hilarious. She froze, eyes wide open, stuck in the classic "surprised" pose. Didn't last too long, though. When she snapped out of it, she sounded very surprised. "How in the world did you know that!?"

I shrugged, and gestured towards my visor. "I've got some fancy bells and whistles in here. You already knew?"

She nodded. "Yeah, she told me almost a week ago."

It was about now that Penny finally talked. "I thought you would already know. And you're okay with me not being a real girl?"

"Hey, so long as you don't go all Skynet on me, we're good."

She looked really relieved, all of sudden. I don't know what kind of brain they stuck in her, but it can apparently simulate emotions, which is very fucking high end tech. "That's sensational!"

I cleared my throat (or, rather, I simulated the noise of clearing my throat using the voice synthesizer, on account of my actual throat being a bullet-riddled mess.) "Right, just wanted to get that out of the way. Lets get moving, I want to get out of these damned woods."

-----

"So, what should we call you, mister?"

We'd been walking in silence for a little bit, until Penny decided to strike up a conversation. Ruby stayed quiet, though. I think she was still embarrassed about the whole "shooting me" thing.

I thought about my response for a moment. I could just tell them my actual name, but that wasn't really who I was anymore. That guy was dead, killed in New York. I was someone, or something else now. "Alcatraz. You can call me Alcatraz."

"That's an interesting name. In Remnant, most names are based off of colors." She tapered off a bit there, and we walked in silence again, until Ruby finally tried saying something. "I like your suit. It's very, uh, intimidating. Why don't you take off your mask, though?"

Well, shit.

I knew it was going to come up eventually, and it's probably for the best that I get it out of the way as soon as possible. Besides, given how okay they apparently were with sentient machines, maybe they wouldn't freak out too much.

"I can't."

She frowned in confusion. "Why not?"

If I still had lungs, I would have taken a deep breath. "I can't take it off, because...I'm not in very good condition." They both stopped and turned to look at me.

"What do you mean, 'you aren't in very good condition'?"

"This isn't just a suit. It's made out of nanotech, and can adapt and change to suit different situations. One of it's biggest priorities is making sure that the poor bastard inside stays alive. Before I got in the suit two days ago...I got fucked up. Bad. See, in my world, all soldiers have to keep them alive is their armor. None of your bullshit soul-forcefields for us. I took some bad hits. A gunship opened up on me and my squad, killed most of them, and left me with a laundry list of injuries. After that, the suit needed to repurpose biomass to fix the stuff I absolutely can't survive without, like my brain and spine."

Penny looked concerned, Ruby looked horrified, but she pushed on. "How bad is it?"

"My heart's gone. Completely. The suit's infusing oxygen and nutrients directly into my cells. Because of that, despite most of my other organs being shredded, I'm still on my feet." A dark chuckle escaped me before I continued. "But you see, the suit didn't stop there. We were up against some long fucking odds, one of me against a couple thousand of fucking aliens, and if I didn't pull through, everyone on the planet would have been dead. So, it decided to make me better. My muscles weren't up to the task, too fragile, not powerful enough. The suit's artificial structure was strong on it's own, but it needed to be stronger. So, my muscles were mostly replaced by carbon nanotubes. My brain? It was good, but not good enough. Too slow, too dumb, needed too much rest, and too squishy. It's been augmented with a synthetic neural mesh, which had the side effect of letting the suit AI toy around in my subconscious. My organs? Unnecessary now. After all, the suit's keeping me alive all on it's own, it doesn't need any help. My lungs, guts, every part of me that isn't essential has probably been broken down and replaced by more efficient systems."

Penny looked shocked and sympathetic, but Ruby looked like she might be sick. Too bad, I came this far, and I am not stopping now.

"In the end, it was all worth it. I stopped the aliens, kept them from shooting off some apocalyptic bioweapon. But, when the dust settled, I wasn't exactly human anymore. I don't think I've been human for a long time. My own guys knew it. The whole time, even the people who were supposed to be on my team kept freaking out around me. Hell, a group called CELL spent more time trying to kill me than to deal with the aliens. I'd do it all again, though. Every. Last. Part. Because, if I didn't, everyone else would have died."

Things got really quiet after I was done talking. I like to think that I'm prepared for anything, and that nothing can catch me off guard.

Oh how wrong I was.

Suddenly, Ruby blurred into motion, moving towards me. My enhanced perception could track her movement, but I couldn't actually move my limbs fast enough to block her. I braced myself against an attack, ready to strike back, and then she was right on me and-

She gave me a hug.

Holy shit.

I am probably the most un-huggable thing on the face of the earth. I'm an inhuman killing machine that looks like someone flayed a person down to the muscle, and then painted them in black and chrome.

That didn't stop her. Even with the augments, it took me a few seconds to come up with a response. When I did, it was along the lines of "Uh... wha?"

She let go, and stepped back. She looked kind of embarrassed, freaked out, and sad at the same time. "Sorry. After hearing that... I just thought you could use a hug. Hugs always make me feel better when something bad happens."

Penny suddenly smiled. "Everything will be okay now, Alcatraz! You'll have friends now! We won't freak out around you!"

Ruby nodded. "Right. Just, when we get back, let me tell the others. I'll try to be...delicate."

With the unfortunate subject of my physiology out of the way, we resumed walking.

You know, after so long as being the pariah, it felt really damn nice to have a couple of people offering to be my friends, even though one was a teenage girl and the other was a robot. Originally, I just thought I would be tagging along with them until we got to wherever we were going, and then head off on my own, but now I figure that I might stick around for a bit, at least until I figure out how to get back to Earth. At least, no matter what happens, I'll finally get a break from fighting.