Beacons in The Dark

Chapter 15 - Biorevitalized

"That Machine King grinds any dissent into dust, eradicating entire planets, but he...it..whatever, keeps it all together, the empire, you know? And the keeps those others out, the ones even worse than him." - Drunken conversation about the Autonomous Emperor on a planet at the edge of the Holy Empire's boundaries

He was looking through a semi-gelatinous green fluid, which he of course knew to be a biotank. And on a silvery slab of metal in front of him was his body, the stump of his neck looking even more grotesque with the green glow cast over everything.

And behind it was a large form that he certainly recognized. Her name was Shampoo and she was a facescaper. The best in the sector (because of some tech that Blue had clued her in on) she could perfectly alter a face to unimaginable grace and beauty and not leave the most minute fraction that it was false.

Her work was sought far and wide across the Imperium, and she charged a hefty price, of course, for the beauty she provided.

But that was only one facet to the woman named Shampoo; she didn't just work on faces - her secret speciality was headwork, the kind that even the Medmasters of the Medical Guild would drool over. A small device had been implanted into Blue's brain and as his cranium was so crassly removed from his torso, the electric stimulator kept electricity pumping into his brain and sending a warning beacon to Shampoo.

So after the dust had settled with Nami gone and the dead attackers lying around like uncut marionettes, the gigantic woman with a beehive of pink hair popped out of the telecaster and gathered up Blue's body and head and walked back through it once again.

Strangely enough, Shampoo did not augment her face nor her body, but retained her natural look; probably out of some pride. The place they were in was a back room in her facescaping shop, hidden behind a pneumatic databurst door.

It was stark white with and flooded with harsh clinical light; machines hanging from apertrures on the wall, the special technology that only she had, her very pride and joy.

Wobbling her way to the disembodied head in the jar, she leaned down low to look at it, a grin wide on her homely face.

"Told you it would work, and damned lucky that you decided to have the implant done on yourself, otherwise you'd be dead and deleted, ah such a shame for a lovely young man like you."

Strange to call him that with all the cycles behind him, but flashes of memory were beginning to filter into his mind like a sieve had been opened, allowing him to feel...somehow different; the difference having nothing to do with being decapped.

He remembered the darkness and the light inside of it, the light that had turned into all the light and none of the light, and then had embraced him.

"Well!" said the shrill voice of the large woman, "Let's get this over with, and I might fuse your head on backwards just so you remember to visit your old friend Shampoo once in awhile." and with a wink and a smile, she depressed a blue button on the biotank.

Bubbles began to float in the gel fluid, blue arcs of some energy, though not electricity, it had an orange tint, and with a buzzing noise filling his ears, Blue's eyes rolled in the back of his head and he was unconscious once again.