Which Flesh is Your Flesh?

Chapter 13

A week post op, Raven’s day started as usual. He got up, wincing at the way his plastic sheets stuck to his skin, though he still couldn’t muster the effort to get new ones from somewhere. He checked to see if his hair was growing back yet. Nothing, not even pubes. Then he tugged on the uncomfortable latex flight suit that he had previously refused to wear over his open wounds. It was designed to work as a secondary skin, but it also had also gotten stuck to his body as the blood on the surface of his naked muscle dried, making it extremely painful to take off. With skin it was better, but it was still uncomfortably hot and difficult to get on and off. Once he was done modifying his exo-skeleton he planned to cobble something together out of the old, canvas, Furlong work uniforms lying around the base. He had already made a patch based on his personal pilot’s emblem: a sable shield emblazoned with a skeleton in profile, wielding a scythe in a gauntleted hand, bearing the moto “Memento Mori”.

A dark presentation could be a useful tool, provided it was earned. Raven figured he’d made the life flash before enough enemy pilots’ eyes to earn his. After going up against him, they sure as hell remembered they were going to die some day, and if they lived, they’d know it was really only luck that it hadn’t been by Raven’s talons.

Despite protests from basically everyone he was in contact with, he ran a few simulations. He kept to the lower ranks of the arena and didn’t screw with his jailbroken augments, but he needed to fight. Otherwise he was going to start going fucking nuts. He was already going fucking nuts, but it was going to get worse if he didn’t keep himself busy. Once he was done with that he went outside to grab the parts his dealer had shipped him so that Iguazu wouldn’t find them.

His parts guy, Patch, was probably the luckiest man Raven had ever met. For starters he was old as shit, especially for an AC pilot. Had some real old school modifications too, wired directly into his nerves without any Coral injections to take the edge off. From what Raven remembered from his earth history courses, modifications like that usually drove pilots insane. Then again, he was just as much of a ticking time bomb. Being in the business as long as Patch had, gave you certain advantages. He had lots of connections and he knew how to get ahold of antiques and banned hardware if you had deep enough pockets for them. Even after Iguazu bought his body back, Raven still had plenty of assets left over, more than enough for a few museum pieces.

It used to be that if you got in deep enough with a corporation you risked getting your nerves essentially welded into an industrial exo-skeleton to deny laborers even the autonomy of having a body that was wholly their own increase productivity. However after the labor revolts on Aquila 7, where the corps found out that maybe it was a bad idea to turn disgruntled factory workers into bullet proof gorillas with welding torches for hands, the technology was banned “for ethical concerns”. Of course that didn’t stop the components from showing up on the black market all the time. He’d already started modifying GALLOWS HUMOR. It was a good thing Carla had already modified it to work inside of his AC, it would be painful to add in the extra nerve connections while he was inside of it.

It didn’t scare him as nearly as much as he’d thought it would. He knew what the new parts would do to him, how brutally his exo-skeleton would merge with him, but he didn’t care anymore. Raven needed to feel safe again. He couldn’t keep jumping whenever he caught a flash of chrome at the edge of his vision and he knew there was a way he could make himself stop. That’s all there was to it.

When the parts came in he always made sure to hide them from Iguazu. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t understand why he was doing it, if anything Raven was starting to understand Iguazu better, but at the same time, he knew he would probably be offended. Ayre knew. She was in his head, of course she knew, but she didn’t do anything to stop him. Why would she? She was incorporeal, she couldn’t know what it meant for a being that had lived in one body its entire life to willfully and violently alter it. She couldn’t know what it meant that he was willing and even worse felt he had to. He didn’t want to be Augmented Human C4-621 anymore and he couldn’t be the former VCPL engineer whose name he had lost, but maybe, if it was by his own hands, he could alter himself enough that he could become Raven. He might not have been an MD but he was a fucking Doctor. This was something he could do.

After he smuggled the parts in he started work again. The bone screws in the 01SERF unit (chosen for ease of jailbreaking) were horrific looking. The barbed javelins at the ends of the wired nerve connections poked out of their housings within, and the screws themselves were as wide as his thumb. The good news was that he wouldn’t need to have any ports surgically installed. The bad news was that the 01SERF was designed to imbed itself in bone while the victim was still conscious. There were a lot of screws on that thing, there needed to be so that his own body weight didn’t tear them out. This was going to hurt like hell.

Raven set the last screw in place. Now for the most difficult part. He cursed as he struggled with the stupid fucking latex flight suit. Thankfully, it got caught on the port at the base of his neck and began to tear. From there he just ripped it off, not bothering with trying to keep it in one piece. Then he wiped himself down and cleaned off and disinfected his exoskeleton. He’d started that process days ago. It had been absolutely caked in dried blood after all. It took a shit ton of peroxide, but he’d gotten it clean.

He stared at the disengaged exoskeleton. With the screws studding its inner lining, it looked unsettlingly like a maw filled with teeth.

“People used to be forced into things like that?” Ayre asked.

“Yeah.”

Ayre made a noise that sounded like a pained breath.

“How does your species inflict so much cruelty upon their own?”

“I don’t know.” He slipped his hand into the arms of the exoskeleton. “All I know is that it’s both so difficult it can rip your mind apart to enact so much evil, and so easy that some people make their fortunes on it.” Raven shifted to make sure the screws were lined up properly. “Last chance to get out of here by the way. Not sure how much of this you’ll be able to feel, but I don’t think being in my head for this is going to be fun.”

“I think it’s important for me to be here. There’s something I need to understand.”

“Your funeral.” Raven grabbed his right hand to keep it from shaking. He lined himself back up and activated the locks.

Across the base Iguazu felt like his head had caved in. One moment he had been wondering where the hell Raven had gone and the next he was on his knees, feedback piercing his brain like thousands of needles. Somehow he knew it was a scream. A familiar synthesizer trying to interpret the incoherent data it was being fed and producing that horrible noise, like static and tearing aluminum. Iguazu struggled to his feet, clutching his chest. He pumped his adrenaline higher and gripped the wall to steady himself. Slowly, he began to drag himself towards the source, one foot in front of the other, fighting the feedback like he was trying to walk through a wind tunnel. Finally he managed to find the source of the scream, Raven’s workshop.

There was something on the ground. At first, through the feedback, Iguazu thought it was just a heap of scrap metal, but then he noticed the blood leaking from underneath the rough iron. Raven. He stepped toward him but the crumpled mess lifted a metal hand in a clear indication to stop.

“No, not you.” Iguazu heard three voices speak, Raven’s growling synthesizers, his torn and broken vocal chords, and a third, a woman’s voice.

“You’re bleeding!” Iguazu protested. He heard a series of clicks from the metal heap and then a quiet grinding noise. “Raven!” Iguazu stepped forward again.

“Stay back! If you interrupt the process now you could kill me.” Raven’s synthesizers wailed, though at the same time, a raspy scream tore through his throat, probably out of his own control. His body spasmed wildly like he was having a seizure.

“Fuck!” Iguazu shouted, his hands gripping the fiber optic cables that made up his hair. He would’ve been reflexively tearing it out if it wasn’t wired into him. He didn’t know what to do. Raven was bleeding out, he was in pain, he’d clearly done this to himself and he didn’t want Iguazu to help him. Why? What had he done wrong? He didn’t understand.

Just as quickly as it had started, the grinding abated and the convulsions and the screaming stopped. The shuddering rise and fall of the heap was the only sign he was still breathing.

“Raven?”

The mass of flesh and steel braced an arm against the ground, its heavy metal palm thudding against the vinyl floor. Servos whined and gears growled as it pushed itself to its feet. Blood seeped from below its carapace like juice from an overripe plum. Iguazu could see snatches of bolts driven deep into Raven’s skin, piercing him in hundreds of places along the lines of his skeleton. Even from here Iguazu could see the whites of his dark eyes, drawn wide open and maddened from the pain.

“It’s over.” Raven’s voice was shattered from screaming. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you!” Iguazu punched him. Raven yelped and Iguazu pulled back. He was shocked at himself. Why the fuck had he done that? “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. That’s just how you are, Iguazu, always sticking your fingers in my wounds.” Raven smiled, blood leaking from between his teeth. “But I get it, that’s just how you express your love right? You torture me. You don’t even mean to do it half the time, it’s just that we’re photo negatives of each other.” He grabbed Iguazu’s hand and brought it to one of the screws piercing through Raven’s ribcage. Then he grabbed the back of Iguazu’s head, crashing them together and forcing him to meet Raven’s crazed eyes. “Go on, touch me. I know you want to.”

“No! You’re out of your fucking mind!”

“Then why are you hard?” Raven forced Iguazu’s head down, making him watch as his cock pushed its way out of his carapace.

“You’re a fucking freak!” Iguazu cursed.

“So are you.” Raven gently tugged on his collar. “Would you do it if I pat your head and call you a good boy afterwards?”

“Fuck off,” Iguazu shot back weakly.

“Oh, so you want it rougher today. Then I can disconnect your cameras, take your arms and legs off, and fuck with your pleasure sensors until your brain leaks out of your chassis.”

“Fuck off!” He shot back stronger this time, pushing Raven away. “You’re not going to distract me! What the hell did you do?!”

“I made a mistake.” Raven admitted. “I shouldn’t have let you try to fix me. You didn’t even know what was broken. I was afraid of letting other people turn me into their weapon.” He revved his built in chainsaw and he growled loudly as his teeth spun. “I don’t need to be afraid anymore. I’m my own weapon. Though, you don’t need to worry.” He brushed Iguazu’s cheek. “I’m greedy. I still want you as my weapon too.” Raven started to kiss him, but Iguazu pushed him away.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you let me do this to you.” Raven dragged his metal hand across Iguazu’s chest, leaving a trail of blood as he went. “You’re offended aren’t you? That I couldn’t let you change me the way I changed you.”

“I’m pissed off because you don’t trust me! You don’t fucking tell me when something is wrong! The only way I find out is when I catch you trying to crawl under the fucking porch to die!”

“I’m not trying to die. This is me trying to live, okay? I know it’s fucking psychotic but I need to have control over myself, even if it means this.” He gestured at the torn mess of his skin, wincing as it spat blood in response to the movement. “Like I said, we’re negatives. This was the only way I could start healing from what you did to me.”

“Are you trying to blame me for this?!”

“No. Like I said, you just didn’t understand what you were doing to me. I still got hurt, but it’s not your fault.”

“I’m not fucking stupid!” Iguazu punched Raven again,this time knowing full well what he was doing. “You can’t just say you forgive me without fucking telling me I hurt you!”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“No! You think I want you constantly telling me how you’re so much fucking better and so much more fucking mature than me?! Fuck off! You tell me off all the time for not fucking communicating, why don’t you fucking communicate!” Iguazu didn’t really understand why he was so angry, he just knew that he was seeing red. “You know what?! Fuck this! Can you fight, asshole?!”

Raven spat out a glob of blood.

“Now?”

“Now!”

“Fuck it, yeah why the hell not.” Raven smiled with blood covered teeth.

“With weapons.” Iguazu insisted. “Do your fucking worst.”

“Are we betting something on this or is this just for shits and giggles?”

“No.” He knew what he wanted to get out of this but it was so small and fucking petty that he didn’t dare speak it aloud. Not because Raven would be angry with him, but because he would pity him. That was all Raven seemed to feel for him anymore, just fucking pity. Iguazu was sick of it. He would rather Raven hated him again than pitied him.