CHAPTER 1 - The Android Storywriter

The name’s Dwight, a random traveling writer journaling the places I’ve been to, and so far I’ve been getting used to my stay at the Tower of Heroes. I’ve heard about this tower before, but thanks to a courier named Lewis, I’ve been given another place to call home, albeit I’m more cautious about its terms for the free room. The residents of this place seem pretty nice despite some oddballs here and there. Apparently there are some residents here that read some of my published works, which was pretty nice to know considering I’ve been a freelancer for a while. Some of them even recommended some amenities to try out, which I gladly jotted down on my holopad.

Deciding to check some of them out, I found myself standing in the halls right outside the door that led to the colosseum’s arena. I debated if I either wanted to fight or watch, but it sure is an interesting place to commit some people-watching. A lot of them are unique in their own way while also potentially carrying an interesting story to listen to. With most of them considered a hero in some way, it sure makes it intimidating to leisurely go up to one. After rallying myself up, I chose a random resident to be a victim to my questioning.

The victim in question was a random white tiger with black stripes around my stature, wearing some business casual clothes and carrying a hefty black messenger bag. His blue t-shirt has a small black, leather pocket notebook that rests in the pocket on his left breast and some comfy brown khakis. Wrapped around his neck were some gnarly surgical stitch scars which seemed to emit a green glow to it. I only decided to approach him because he was talking to a disembodied head of a red, robotic tiger and he doesn’t look like he’ll instantly crush my head with his arms, chest, or thighs.

“So everything’s ok? Your body is repaired right,” the white tiger asked his companion. I slowly inched my way to them, listening in on their conversation.

“Yep,” the robot replied, “self maintenance was done this morning. We should be ready for combat, if you’re up for it.” The head looked straight at me before loudly continuing, “unless our new friend here is going to challenge us. Hello there stranger!”

Getting called out of the blue, I meekly waved with my right hand as soon as the white tiger turned towards me. “N-Not yet,” I awkwardly answered, “I was just curious about you two. Mind if I ask you some questions?”

“Ask away,” my victim answered, “though might I ask what’s your name Mr. Interviewer?”

“The interviewee is named Mungo Lowell,” the robot blurted out shoving himself between the felines, “and his agent is me, Mango. Don’t ask anything weird or I’ll bite you with my metal fury.” They immediately opened their robotic maw as they forcefully snapped shut repeatedly as they slowly approached me. Mungo immediately stopped them by smacking them upside the head, powering the robot off as it loudly clunked to the stone ground.

“Sorry about that,” Mungo apologized, “what was your name again?”

“Well,” I replied as I stared at the robot head below, “the name’s Dwight, just some random writer.” Immediately, I touched the blue gemstone embedded on my headband as my holographic journal appeared in my empty hand. I quickly wrote down my observations about the robot head as I wondered what the story behind it was.

“Ah so your eyes are the same as mine,” Mungo noted, prompting me to look at his orange Eyes, the same shade as mine. “I didn’t think I would meet someone with the same Eyes. I usually expect people with our Eyes to be some dude sitting safely at home.”

“Same here, but us travelers need to get the creative juices going after all,” I replied with a smile as I watched the white tiger pull out his cute, little notebook and a silver fountain pen from his shirt and write something down. With my usual inquisitive mind, I asked. “So what are you writing there buddy?”

“An idea I just got for a little story,” the Mungo answered, “you know how it is, ideas just come and go if you don’t put it in paper quick enough. And I definitely need it since I’ve been stuck in a rut lately.” He laughed a bit nervously, but I laughed along with him, easing him a bit more.

“I know how that feels,” I replied while I put away my writing board and started using my mental notes, “mind if I get the scoop on that idea of yours? In exchange, I could share with you an idea I’ve been thinking of writing.” I could see my new friend beaming as I asked him, we continued to talk about ideas and stories with each other, enjoying our time together. “So what’s with the robot head,” I asked as I glanced down at his feet, “you made him yourself?”

“Oh, I didn’t make him,” the tiger quietly answered as he booted up the robot, “but it’s a bit complicated on why I have him.” He then revealed to me his story of a journalist’s death and revival, killed off by an organization for finding out too much and revived by them as an amnesiac android. After thwarting their plans of reviving a mad god, he was offered his body back by the tower, with some remnants of robotic parts still intact. What happened to the android body was a mystery to him as the hunk of metal suddenly showed up at his doorstep alive and well.

“So does he have a mind of his own,” I asked as the floating head stared at me, “since it can move on its own and stuff.”

“I believe so, from what I’ve asked him, he doesn’t remember my story and he’s definitely more eccentric than me. Strange thing is, I don’t get any memories when I connect with him, just static and noise.”

“What do you mean by that? Do you two mentally connect with each other?”

“Yeah, he’s using my old body and I still have the chip in my brain, so I don’t see why not. I try not to control him though, it brings back some bad memories and I’d rather not strip away Mango’s free will.” Mango, the robo head, bites into Mungo’s right ear. “Even if he can be a bit much,” he noted as he swatted the robot away. We heard a bell ring throughout the colosseum, signaling the next round to start and reminding us where we were standing.

“So since we’re here, you wanna fight later,” he asked nonchalantly with a smile as he adjusted his shirt, “You don’t seem like the guy that wants to laze around writing articles all day, so I kind of want to see your skills in action.” I smiled back as I placed a hand on the butt of my knife and nodded. We went together towards the registration booth, with him mostly guiding me on where it is. After we registered a round, we went our own separate ways, preparing for the incoming fight.

As we were both called to the field, we stood against each other, face-to-face as I readied my knife. Mungo took out and opened his little pocket notebook as he took out an unfolding baton from his pants pocket, electricity spewing out of it. Floating beside him is Mango, their eyes briefly glowing a neon green like the stitches on his owner’s neck. I assumed that the two are connected with each other.

The round began, with me immediately running toward my opponent as I thought of a carving to write. In response, Mungo flicked his electrifying stun baton in my direction, with the robot following the directions as it spat out a tornado in front of him. Quickly taking out a black marker, I charged into the tornado as I wrote some runes down on my arm. As if I was light as a piece of paper, I was launched high into the air as I saw the white tiger’s eyes watching me. Putting away the marker, I quickly grabbed a handful of marbles I’ve written ahead of time before scattering them below. “Let the marbles crash down like the meteors in the starry sky,” I chanted, watching them carefully.

A crater immediately formed as the first marble landed on the ground, and soon the rest of them crashed beneath me. Underneath them I saw Mungo, with his orange Eyes glowing, carrying his robot friend as he somehow avoided the chaos. With a quick write, my eagle eyes spotted why, in his hand was a silver fountain pen as he wrote physical letters in midair. Every floating sentence he wrote immediately gets launched off as it deflects the marbles with ease. I soon landed after, with Mungo freeing his bot from shelter and putting away his pen while detaching his stun baton from his hip.

“That was a nice trick you got there Dwight,” the tiger complimented, “you really know how to use your Eyes.”

“Thanks, but you were impressive too,” I replied back with praises, “haven’t seen something like that, using actual words to fight back.” The tiger beamed as I said that while we were circling each other.

“It’s a special magic of mine,” Mungo revealed, “I had to write in complete sentences though, but it gives me some good practice on thinking stuff on the fly.” We smiled as we readied ourselves to attack again. “You’ve done your stuff, now it’s my go!”

Charging at me as the robot head follows suit, I took out my knife in my dominant hand as I wrote down a rune on myself with my other hand. My body became rubbery as an eraser while my knife clashed with his baton, shocking my body a little more than I anticipated. It wasn’t enough to stop me from writing on myself to give tremendous strength, overtaking the clash and letting me slash at him with my knife across his chest and kicking him away from me. I wrote another rune on myself to run as fast as lightning before dashing across the field slashing Mungo repeatedly. I was close to finishing the fight, until his little robot decided to be useful.

My knife clashed with something metallic in the dust field, it was a robotic arm that stopped me, forcing me to back away to see a better look at my opponent. The dust dissipates, revealing Mango taking over Mungo’s body by replacing his head. Mungo’s body was soon covered by red sheets of metal as Mango extended itself to become a mechanical suit of armor for the tiger. Swords digitized themselves into existence in midair, before the mech grabs them both and dual wields them. “Synchronization complete,” Mungo and Mango declared in unison, “host reconstruction in progress, activating defensive protocol.”

He immediately flew towards me as I was forced to defend myself from his two blades with my small knife. “A-And here I thought you were going to be on the defensive,” I commented as I watched Mango’s digital eyes smiling at me. It wasn’t long before he overpowered me, knocking my knife out of my hand before slashing me with his blades. With my weapon knocked away and the damage I took, Mungo was declared the winner, with both of us shaking hands after the declaration. Wanting to hang out more, we went out to get some post-match food. His little robot was drained from the burst attack, so the white tiger stuffed him in his bag before moving on.

We went to the cafe located on the first floor, ordered and grabbed our food, then went to a table for two. I kept thinking about that transformation that Mungo did, wondering what exactly I witnessed. “So that part at the end of our fight,” I asked while I watched the white tiger opening his soda, “what exactly was that? It didn’t seem like it was an Illusory Field.”

“Oh that? Consider it a last resort of mine, that’s what I used to look like before I got my body back,” he answered with a sad, nostalgic smile, “it used to have a lot of artificial organs in it, but it’s just a simple suit now. Usually Mango has control over it and he puts it on me whenever he feels like I was in danger.”

“So your actual body wasn’t used for being an android?” I noticed immediately that Mungo hovered his hand over the glowing scars around his neck.

“Only one thing was attached to that robot’s systems and that was my decapitated head. They didn’t have the time to scoop my brain out, so they just built that helmet to cover up most of my face and hooked my head up with some runic technology they were experimenting with.” Upon hearing about runic technology, I recalled my time at Weilinx where I accidentally stumbled upon some ruins of a city run by them.

It wasn’t a pretty sight, not because of the run down buildings or the broken, abandoned technology, but it’s due to the “inhabitants” that lived in them. Scattered throughout the ruins were multiple runic automatons, dutifully guarding the perimeter from outsiders, which is a bit odd since they should have fallen whenever the people that lived there perished. Those machines have another purpose, assimilating new citizens to the city by capturing outsiders, and forcefully merging their bodies with theirs, wiping and altering their mind. That’s what I think anyway, all I’ve witnessed from it were heads sticking out of the robots, blissfully smiling eerily as they emit some sort of indecipherable language. Considering they were alive, the automatons probably had a way of sustaining life to them and maybe they were somehow involved with whatever company that caught Mungo.

“Did you happen to know where they got the tech,” I questioned my new friend. He only shook his head before stating it was info he couldn’t get at the time. I dropped the subject immediately after, not wanting my new friend to relive his life there, and steered to a different topic when I was reminded of someone. “Y’know, I have this friend that wears this robotic mask all the time, I bet he would love Mango and the intrinsics of its system. He’s pretty good with machines, so maybe he could give you insights on what’s going on with that robot’s head.”

“Really?” I nodded my head, noting his lack of knowledge about Norren and its scientific technology.

“If you don’t mind, we can take a trip there,” I suggested as I summoned my holopad from my headband’s gem. “He lives in a port city in Norren called Navineo, so we can take a boat there. I believe I still have a pair of tickets for the Seven Stars that we can use”

“Oh you don’t need to do that, we have the Dimensional Doors,” Mungo reminded me. “Though I don’t know if we have a door there.”

“Probably? I haven’t gotten a good look at those doors myself,” I replied, only briefly remembering the door that leads to a spa. “What I do know is the Seven Stars will lead us straight there, so if you don’t mind the wait, we can go on a cruise together. We can even get Mango to come with us, just stuff him in your luggage and all.” The tiger let out a soft chuckle, taking a quick sip of his drink.

“Sure, it’ll give me a good excuse to leave the Tower again. When do you want to go? I’m free to go whenever next month.”

“I’ll have to check,” I responded as I pulled up my contacts. “I need to check in with my friend, but we should be able to go probably in a week or two. I’ll let you know once I get a response from them.” He agreed to it, with both of us exchanging our contact information before spending the rest of our time talking until we went our separate ways.

Once I was back in my room, I went through my contacts, ensuring Mungo was there while looking for another person. I looked for the familiar profile pic of my handsome friend, a grey cat wearing a robotic helmet that donned a digital heart. The name of a friend I’ve grown up with, Jasper Morant, or to others, a heroic vigilante named Delta Devil.