Out of This World Gaming [~ read description]

Chapter 30: Chloromancy

The sounds of an older woman's screams reverberated within another large room before a loud thud could be heard. It seemed as though whatever collided with the floor had fallen from quite a height, but she had to have been alive as evident from her heavy breathing and grunting. "First I get separated from Iris, then they have the nerve to have a tube transport to this damn room. Now then, I gotta find her." the older woman's voice fretted as the sound of the fast clicking of heels against the floor advanced towards a nearby door; however, she gasped mid sprint and once again collided with the floor after tripping over something fairly large. 

"What now?" she asked, annoyed. She turned on her side and used her hands to support her weight in order to get up, but she stopped when her eyes landed on a young female not too much younger than her. At first she thought this had to have been a human, but a disconnected accessory was on the floor not too far away from her. The woman rose to her feet and cautiously approached the accessory before she proceeded to kneel and scoop it up in her hands.

All of it was black and had a slightly thinner look and feel to it. She thought for a moment that it had to have been just a human's choker, but when she felt the circular plate in the middle to reveal that it had the same texture as a computer screen, that's when she realized that this was an Identity Choker. With this new knowledge, Larkspur concluded that this unconscious being was also a consoleoid and approached the young woman. 

Larkspur gently wrapped the choker on the fainted being's neck and successfully attached it properly, and thankfully, it still worked when she realized that a robotic voice emanated from the device. 

"Specimen: Consoleoid. Valid BIOS detected. Connecting.......... Connection to BIOS successful. Gathering personal data. Would you like any of this data to be said aloud?" it kindly inquired. Larkspur thought about it for a moment; not wanting to come off as a creep, she made up her mind. "I don't want her name or personal information. Please perform a health diagnosis." 

"Performing diagnosis. Please wait." it spoke. 

"Diagnosis complete. Physical disabilities: None. Internal biological health check: Okay. Cause of shutdown: forced via esophageal stricture. Internal and external hardware are okay. All software data is okay. Launch boot sequence?" it kindly offered. 

From the sound of it, it seemed as though this female had been choked nearly to death, but if everything's okay now, should she wake up? Perhaps she knows something Larkspur doesn't, thus, she made up her mind and leaned downward to press the power button on the choker. 

"Booting.." 

"Boot sequence complete. Starting operating system." 

While the female was booting, Larkspur began to think about what could've happened here. Even with the Identity Choker connected, she could still see the splotches of black and blue that adorned her neck. 

She heard groaning from nearby and turned to see the female sitting up and looking around. The female brushed her hand through her wavy, thin, dirty blonde locks and rose to her feet, which were clothed in black suede boots. She proceeded to brush off her long sleeved, gray dress that extended to her knees; it seemed like a cold weather dress, and checked to see if her gray-blue leggings were dirty or torn. 

She turned around to see Larkspur, and her copper brown eyes met up with Larkspur's purplish ones. "Please don't hurt me! I beg of you! I'll tell you anything I want, just please don't strangle me with vines again!" she screeched and sobbed into her hands as she fell to her knees again. "Strangle you with vines? I'm not gonna do any of that. Do I look anything like the person that hurt you?" Larkspur negotiated as she knelt to comfort the fearful consoleoid.