Hex Value

ACT 1: Shutdown in Solitude

>WEAKNESS.

After an immeasurable time spent trying to get even one system to reboot, E-123 Omega's efforts were all rewarded with this. One measly fuse restored. One sole, quietly-buzzing circuit back online, whose first order of duty had seemingly been to mock him.

>WEAKNESS.

Omega couldn't understand why that lone word had been left stuck to his RAM, why it was the first file he had processed upon this pitiful attempt of a reboot. He wasn't exactly in the best space to mull it over, either. Then again, processing bytes of information was about all he was currently capable of, and even those functions were only barely holding on. He felt, only felt, little else, the lone spark of power rummage throughout his internals, assessing the damage, like a faint trickle of raindrops running down his circuitry. The fox's flowery, sappy way of writing code had been immediately recognizable to Omega as soon as it made contact with his backup power supply - nevertheless, he knew well to be grateful for the attempted repairs. Gratitude wasn't exactly something he'd been designed for; but then, neither was defeat. Yet against both odds, here he was.

As the diagnostics test worked to its best abilities to confirm his suspicions, Omega tried with his remaining processing power to recall what had put him in this position to begin with. He'd always known that this was a possible (expected, even) consequence of his lust for battle: eventually, one of those battles would end up worse for him, than for his opponent. Yet he'd never processed the possibility that it would occur during his prime operating time. Less, still, could he have predicted that he wouldn't even be left knowing the reason for his defeat; that he'd instead be left in a state of nothingness paired with confusion for what he believed was several weeks at this point. Adding to that strangeness, the slow trickle of information from the ongoing damage assessment wasn't even reporting any damage done to his chassis, beyond the expected environmental wear-and-tear. From what Omega could glean, it was as if he hadn't even been attempting to fight back before his fall, as if he'd accepted his demise and left himself to the incalculable, unprocessable whims of nature.

>UNPROCESSABLE.

With that one key term, a surge of memory files suddenly came to him, as if having just been uncovered from a hidden directory: he felt the lone spark working yet harder to keep up with the heightened demand of processing. A recon mission to one of the Doctor's bases. A familiar voice over intercom speaker. The wonderful, wonderful sensation of lighting Egg Pawns ablaze. Destruction. Chaos. Mayhem. Confidence. Wonder. And then, a looming, faceless unknown - followed by a great flash of red. He'd barely raised his gun, let alone processed what kind of foe lay behind that mask, before being abruptly forced offline. A stark flash of red was the last of these files he could load in without issue, and in the state he was in, even that proved to be straining on his remaining memory allocation.

With a shaky buzz, the diagnostics check wrapped up, displaying a visual Omega had not seen since near his creation. The doctor's spiteful, meticulously-designed production logo, wrapped within a bold triangular shape, overlayed with a loud exclamation mark, all contrasted by a dull, faintly glowing gray tone. He hated it all - he always had - but much like that last time he'd seen it, he had no way of ignoring it in the state he was in. If nothing else, he'd at least been taught how to process and evaluate the data within the report's full logs quite effectively, to where he knew just about what to glean from the summarized reports alone.

>DAMAGE REPORT [SUMMARY]
>OUTER CHASSIS: 95% [CLEAR]
>MOBILITY MECHANISMS: 90% [CLEAR]
>SYSTEM FUNCTIONS: 60% [STANDBY - REBUILDING]
>INTERNAL PROCESSOR: 5% [CRITICAL - REBUILDING]
>EVALUATION: CRITICAL DAMAGE OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN TO PROCESSING SYSTEMS PROHIBITING SAFE REBOOTING.

The gravity of his processor's damage didn't quite settle in until he'd viewed the report over, several times over. Slower processing of information was, granted, to be expected - yet such disparity between internal and external damage still felt impossible to make sense of. The quiet hum from the looming gray log message didn't particularly aid in his processing either; it had been so long since he'd last seen it, he'd almost forgotten that he was still permanently marked with the doctor's software. Both now and then, it was if he hadn't even been given the right to contest his fate - as if he'd been put in stasis without a chance to fight back. Back then, he could blame the doctor. But now...Omega didn't know what to blame.
He wasn't able to close the message window, as the importance of its information far outweighed his disdain for the man responsible for its design. Yet he felt as if he needed to get away from it - to, for once, focus on things other than the Doctor. No amount of ruminating on that conflict would change his directive...but by contrast, those memories from before his shutdown felt more important than ever.